Paradise Triptych

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Tea with an apologetic duchess

The following excerpt is from a Christmas special I wrote about the mend in the breach between Haverford and his mother. It was a made-for-newsletter-subscribers story called Christmas at Hollystone Hall (password is in two-monthly newsletter). Another version of the same scene is told from Eleanor’s perspective in Paradise Triptych.

It was the day before Christmas, and the incessant rain had let up long enough for an expedition to bring in the greenery for decorating, and the windfallen log that had been marked as a Yule log for the massive fireplace in the great hall.

Four wagons set out for the woods, each driven by one of the party’s gentlemen, with the littlest children riding in the tray watched by various of the older sisters and mothers, and everyone else tramping along beside.

Haverford drove one of those conveyances known as a break, inviting anyone who did not want to walk or sit on the floor of the wagons to take their place in one of the long benches behind him, but found himself travelling alone.  No matter. The wagons would be full on the return trip, and the break would come in handy for the little ones.

Groundsmen, grooms, and footmen trailed the party, ready to lend a hand with the heavier hauling, but—for the most part—the family planned to collect their own raw materials for the garlands and other decorations they planned.

The woods were beyond the water gardens and up a small rise. Each wagon took a different turn from the main track, and Haverford carried on to the central clearing, where servants had started a fire and set up blankets and cushions for those who needed a rest from their excursions. Maids were already unpacking refreshments, and footmen hurried to the back of the break to offload the steaming kettles of hot chocolate, coffee and two different kinds of punch, with and without alcohol.

Haverford left them setting the kettles near the fire to stay warm and followed the sound of voices to join in the fun. Before he reached the main crowd, however, he encountered his mother, lifting Nate’s sister, little Lavinia, up into a tree to reach for a pine cone, while one of Lechton’s daughters, Millicent, held onto Mama’s gown and watched.

“Do you need help, Lavie?” Haverford asked.

Mama started. “Haverford! I didn’t see you there. The little girls wanted to help, and I remembered that last year some of the trees along here had pine cones under them, but the only ones I can see are still on the branches.”

“There are some further along, the way I came,” Haverford told her. He reached up and took Lavie’s hand, guiding her to push the cone up so that it detached from the branch. It evaded her snatch at it and plummeted into the undergrowth, and Millicent let go of Mama and dived in after it, emerging triumphant with it in her hand.

Mama lowered Lavie to the ground, saying, “The two of you make a good team.” She darted a glance at Haverford. “Perhaps I should take them back to the others.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Cherry was right. He had to fix this, or at least try.

“They know the little girls are safe with you,” he said. “Bring them this way, Mama, and they will be able to fill their basket with cones to paint.”

Lavie sealed Mama’s fate by slipping her hand into Haverford’s. He would have taken Millicent’s hand, too, except she was shy of him. Besides, that would leave Mama carrying the basket, which was hardly gentlemanly. He picked it up and led the way to a small cluster of fir trees of different kinds, with cones scattered on the nearly clear ground beneath.

Mama would have helped the little girls who were scurrying to and fro, picking up all the cones they could find, but Haverford said, “Mama. A word, if I may.”

She stopped, and the anxiety in her eyes had him hiding a wince as he added, “Would you meet with me in private when we get back to the house? I think we need to talk.”

She inclined her head, her social mask firmly in place and her eyes opaque. He had learned the skill from her—to hide his feelings behind a bland and unreadable exterior, but neither of them treated family to that distancing. Given the situation between them, he had no right to feel bereaved at her shutting him out.

Cherry would remind him that his armour was most impenetrable when he felt most threatened. Doubtless, Mama was the same. “Nothing too terrible, Mama. Even if I had stopped loving you, which I haven’t, I wouldn’t want to upset Cherry.”

She gave him the ghost of a smile. “The pair of you are good together,” she acknowledged, then turned her attention to Lavie, who had dropped her side of the basket so that all the cones the little girls had picked spilled onto the ground.

Haverford crouched to help pick them up, while Mama soothed the wailing child.

The afternoon had been set aside to create and put up the decorations. The foliage and other items they had collected was spread out on tables in the ballroom, where it would be formed into garlands, wreaths, and kissing balls decorated with ribbons and paper chains and flowers that the ladies had unearthed from previous Christmases or made from their own supplies.

Mama was seated with a flock of girls, watching them dip pine cones into paint and set them to dry. Haverford beckoned to her, and she murmured a word or two to Jessica, who was helping her and the girls.

He took her to the library, to a chair near the desk he’d taken over for the work that followed him everywhere. He was neglecting it today, but it wasn’t going to go away. He’d get back to it after Christmas.

As he settled in his own chair, and before he could pour her tea from the waiting tray and start his prepared speech, Mama spoke. “Haverford, I have apologised for interfering between you and Cherry, but I would like to do so again. I have known all along that I was wrong to go privately to Cherry as I did. You are adults, and I should have said what I thought to both of you and trusted you to make your own decision. I am truly sorry for the distress I caused you.”

Haverford opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Mama put up a hand to stop him. “I have a second apology to make, Haverford. Watching you and Cherry together in the past week shows me that I was wrong again—wrong to believe that your love for Cherry was less deep than hers for you. Wrong to think that you would fall out of love once you had achieved your prize. All I ever wanted was for both of you to be happy. You are perfect for one another, and I shudder to think how close I came to preventing that happiness.”

Mama had rendered him speechless, taking all the best lines from what he had been about to say to her. All he had left to say was, “Thank you, Mama.”

“I will never interfere again,” Mama promised, then, with a slight frown, “or, at least, I will try my very best.”

Haverford smiled at the thought of his managing mother keeping her fingers out of any situation she thought she could improve. “I shall not ask such a sacrifice, Mama. Both Cherry and her mother have pointed out what a marvellous gift you have for interfering, as you call it. All I ask is that you consult us first on any plans you have that involve us and don’t proceed without our agreement.”

Mama had tears in her eyes. “I can promise that,” she agreed.

Cherry had been right to push him to reconcile. All his irritation had melted away. “Tea, Mama?” he asked.

They enjoyed a peaceful cup of tea, and the kind of conversation he had so enjoyed in the past, ranging far and wide on topics as diverse as family, the corn tax, and the Luddites.

“Come on, Mama,” he said, when her cup was empty, “We have a house to decorate.”

He offered her his hand to help her rise, and his elbow to escort her back to the ballroom, just in time to see a footman moving a ladder away from the arched doorway. A kissing ball hung in the middle of the arch. Cherry stood looking up at it, and she glanced their way and smiled to see them together.

Haverford put his arm around his mother, reached up for a mistletoe berry, and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. “I love you, Mama,” he told her. “Merry Christmas.”

She patted the side of his face, the tears welling again. “It will be,” she agreed. “I love you, Haver… I wonder, would it be a great impertinence of me to call you Anthony, as Cherry does?”

“I would like that, very much,” Haverford assured her, blinking back a little moisture of his own. The candles must be smoking.

She patted his cheek again, then reached out to Cherry, who was beaming at them. “Here, Anthony. You would be better off kissing your wife than your old mother.”

Haverford thought both was better still, but he was certainly glad to follow up his peace-making kiss to his mother with one of gratitude and jubilation shared with Cherry. He drew her into his arms, and sank into one of their soul-moving kisses, while around them the family stopped what they were doing to applaud, laugh, cheer or jest, according to their natures.

It was, indeed, going to be a very Merry Christmas.

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Tea with the boys

Another excerpt post. This is one of the memories that Eleanor takes out of her memory box in Paradise Lost, which you’ll find in the collection Paradise Triptych.

Haverford Castle, East Kent July 1806

The Duchess of Haverford examined her two sons as they waited for her to pour them a cup of tea each. To an outsider, they would seem totally at ease — Aldridge relaxed on the sofa, an amused twist to his lips and his cynical eyes fond as he teased his brother about the horse the boy had bought on a jaunt into Somerset; Jon laughing as he defended his purchase, suggesting warmly that the marquis’s eye for a filly blinded him to the virtues of a colt.

To their fond Mama, they appeared worried. Eleanor saw strain around the younger man’s eyes, and quick darting glances at her and then at his brother when Jon thought she wasn’t watching. Aldridge had that almost imperceptible air of being ready to leap to Jon’s defence in an instant; a watchfulness, a vague tension.

Aldridge’s cup was prepared as he liked it, and he came to fetch it from her hands, thanking her with a smile.

She would let them raise the subject, if that was their plan, but she did not intend to let them leave this room without knowing about the new addition to her nursery: a nervous withdrawn little girl of three or four years old. “If she was a bumptious little lordling and not a poor trembling mouse,” Nanny said, “she could be one of my lads come again. Same shaped face and eyes. Same colour hair with the curls that won’t brush out. Their lordships have your eyes, Your Grace, and this wee sprite doesn’t, but I’ll tell you who has eyes just that colour: so close to green as never so.” Not that Nanny did tell the duchess. She did not need to. Those eyes were more familiar to Eleanor than her own.

She handed a cup to the younger son of the man with those eyes.

The child came from Somerset. Jon had brought her home in his curricle, leaving his groom to ride Jon’s horse and manage the colt. On finding out about the little girl, and learning that Jon had deposited her in the nursery and then gone straight out to search town for his older brother, Eleanor had been tempted to question the groom.

However, she wanted Jon to tell her the story.  Or Aldridge, perhaps. It was more likely to be his story than Jon’s, given the age of the child. Jon was only 19. Furthermore, it was in Somerset that a certain outrageous scandal blew up five years ago, resulting in the exile of the sons of two dukes: Aldridge to a remote Haverford estate in northern Scotland, and his accomplice overseas.

Nanny didn’t think the little girl was old enough to be a souvenir of Aldridge’s visit to the Somerset town, but her size might be a result of neglect. She had been half-starved, poor little mite. The bruises might be from falls or other childhood accidents. Nanny suspected beatings, which made Eleanor feel ill to think about.

She sat back with her own cup, and took a sip. As if it were a signal, Jon gave Aldridge another of those darting glances and spoke.

“Mama, I expect you’ve heard about Frances.”

Ah. Good. She was to be told the story. “Is that her name, Jon? Nanny didn’t know it, and little Frances isn’t talking.”

Jon nodded, and smiled. There was a sweetness to the boy that the elder never had, perhaps because he was a ducal heir from the moment of his birth. “She is a little shy, Mama.” His smile vanished and he frowned. “She has been badly used, and for no fault of her own. I could not leave her there, Mama. You must see that.”

Eleanor arched one brow, amusement colouring her voice as she answered. “If you tell me her story, my son, we will find out.”

It was much as Eleanor already suspected, though the villain in the piece was neither of her sons. Lord Jonathan Grenford, arriving in Fickleton Wells to inspect and pay for the offspring of a horse pairing that he coveted, found that the whole town, except for the owner of the horse, gave him a cold shoulder, and no one would tell him or his groom why.

Only on the last night of his stay did he hear the story. He came back to his hotel room to find a woman waiting for him. “A gentlewoman, Mama, but with a ring on her finger, and quite old — maybe 30. I thought… well, never mind that.”

Aldridge gave a snort of laughter, either at Jon’s perspective on the woman’s age or at his assumption about her purpose.

Jon ignored him. “Anyway, I soon realised I was wrong, for there on the bed was a little girl, fast asleep. The woman said she belonged to Haverford, and I could take her. I argued, Mama, but I could see for myself she was one of us, and that was the problem. The woman’s husband had accepted Frances when she was born, but as she grew, she looked more and more like His Grace.”

“He resented being cuckolded, I suppose,” Eleanor said, “Men do, my sons, and I trust you will remember it.”

Both boys flushed, the younger one nodding, the older inclining his head in acknowledgement, the glitter in his eyes hinting he did not at all appreciate the gentle rebuke.

“He took his frustrations out on Mrs Meecham, which she surely didn’t deserve after all this time when I daresay he has sins of his own, and on little Frances too, which was entirely unfair. Mrs Meecham said that if Frances remained as a reminder, the Meechams could never repair their marriage, and that she feared one day he would go too far and seriously hurt or even kill the baby. So, I brought her home. Can we keep her, Mama?”

Eleanor looked at Aldridge, considering.

“She is not mine, if that is what you are thinking, Mama,” her eldest son told her. “She might have been, I must admit, but she was born fifteen months after I was last in Fickleton Wells. I’d been in Scotland for six months when Mrs Meecham strayed outside of her pastures again.”

Six months after the scandal, His Grace the duke had travelled back to Somerset, to pay damages to the gentlemen of Fickleton Wells who claimed that their females had been debauched. He had greatly resented being made a message-boy by the Prince of Wales, and had been angry with his son and the females he had shamed for their indiscretions and beyond furious at the cuckolded gentlemen of the town for imposing on his ducal magnificence with their indignation. The mystery of Frances’s patrimony was solved.

“She is so sweet, Mama, and has been through so much. She needs tenderness and love. Don’t tell me I must give her to foster parents or an orphan asylum. I know His Grace will not be pleased, but…”

Eleanor smiled. “The problem with Fickleton Wells, Jon, as I’m sure Aldridge is aware, is that it is a Royal estate. Wales was mightily annoyed at what he saw as an offence against his dignity. He insisted on Haverford making all right.”

Jon’s shoulders slumped. He clearly thought this presaged a refusal.

Aldridge was seven years more sophisticated and had been more devious from his cradle. His eyes lit again with that wicked glint of amusement. Eleanor nodded to him. “Yes, Aldridge, precisely.”

Aldridge put down his cup. “Wales is not best pleased with His Grace at the moment. A matter of a loss at cards.”

Eleanor and her elder son grinned at one another, and her younger son perked up, looking from one to the other.

“Should one be grieved by the loss of a fosterling,” Eleanor mused, “and take one’s sorrows to, let us say, a Royal princess who might be depended on to scold her brother for the behaviour of one of his favourites…” Eleanor stopped at that. Jonathan did not need the entire picture painted for him. He gazed at her, his eyes wide with awe.

“His Grace will not dare make a fuss. If His Royal Highness finds out that the very man he sent to save him from the offended citizens left a cuckoo chick in the nest of an esteemed leader of the community…”

“Precisely,” Aldridge agreed. “Mama, you are brilliant, as always.”

The duchess stood, leaving her cup on the table, and both boys. “Let us, then, go up to the nursery, and make sure all is well with your new baby sister.”

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Tea with a daughter-in-law

Another excerpt post from Paradise At Last, published this week as part of Paradise Triptych. Eleanor has a heart to heart with Cherry, the new Duchess of Haverford.

They took tea one afternoon in the little parlour Cherry had made her own. The previous evening Haverford had escorted them both to a formal dinner, with dancing afterwards, at the home of Lord Henry’s daughter Susan.

“You will be able to take up the work again, now that you are feeling more energetic,” Eleanor told her daughter-in-law. “I’m very happy to hand it all back to you, or to continue with some of it. You must just tell me what you need.”

“We shall see,” Cherry commented. “I expect I will need your help later in the year. You have guessed have you not?”

Eleanor acknowledged the truth of that with a smile and a nod.

“I thought so. You have not fussed over me as much as Anthony, but you are always there with a snack or a drink when I need it, and always ready to take over when a nap overwhelms me.” She put a hand over Eleanor’s and squeezed. “You and Mother are the only ones to know, apart from Anthony.”

“And, I imagine, your dresser,” Eleanor joked. “It is hard to keep such a secret from one’s maid.”

It was Cherry’s turn to smile and nod.

“Dearest, I could not be more thrilled,” Eleanor said. “And not because of that nonsense about an heir to the Haverford duchy. I have seen enough of you together to know that the love you bear one another is far more important than who carries on the title after we are all gone. But you deserve the little blessing you carry. You and my son will be wonderful parents.”

Cherry burst into tears. “Excuse me, Aunt Eleanor. I seem to have little control over my emotions at the moment.” She put her arms around Eleanor and Eleanor hugged her back, then offered a handkerchief so she could dry her eyes.

“And what of you?” Cherry asked. “I always thought you and Uncle James would make a match of it after the old duke died. We would all be so pleased. Can you not talk to him, Aunt Eleanor?”

Eleanor shook her head. “I expect you know what he thinks of me. Sarah was there when he found out what I had done. I cannot even blame him for it, for I was wrong.”

Cherry made an impatient noise. “And I suppose he has never made a mistake in his life? To throw away all of your history and the friendship you have found in the last few years—surely he is not so foolish.”

Eleanor sighed. “Shall we talk about something else, my dear? What dreadful weather we are having.”

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Tea with a lover

Eleanor kept peeking at her lover over the rim of her tea cup.  Strictly speaking, she supposed, he was her betrothed. Certainly, he had stated his intention to marry her. It had been thrilling, at the time.

“I want to take you back to the townhouse you have rented, lock all the doors, take you to bed, and show you those young people at the farmhouse had no expertise in what they were doing. And after that, I want to marry you, make you my duchess, and spend the rest of my life loving you.”

She supposed, in accepting his invitation, she had replied, in a way. She would be his wife and his duchess soon. But meanwhile, she had taken a lover for the first time in her life, and she intended to enjoy the naughtiness of it.

“A penny for your thoughts, my love,” James said.

Eleanor felt the heat rise. She must be bright scarlet. She had been thinking about precisely how naughty James had been when he took her to bed not three hours ago.

She had been nervous, and no wonder. Though she had been a wife for thirty-six years and had given birth to two sons, both now adults, she knew next to nothing about bed sports. Just what she had picked up from the gossip of wives who had been more fortunate than she. Since Haverford appeared to have no trouble attracting women of every class, she had always wondered if some sort of a lack in her caused his perfunctory attention to bedding her, as if it was a tedious duty to be completed as quickly as possible.

“I don’t know what to do,” she had told James, shyly, as he helped her out of her clothing. He was kissing her back, going lower with each button opened, and there were a lot of buttons. But at her comment, he stopped. “Anything you wish, Eleanor,” he said.

“But I don’t know what to wish,” she objected, annoyed at herself for her own ignorance. She should have asked more questions when the conversation turned risque, instead of reminding those present that they were ladies by introducing another topic of conversation.

James turned her in his arms so that she was facing him. He had removed his outer clothing, and his shirt gaped at the neck. She stared at a patch of dark chest hair, wondering if it would be soft or wiry to the touch.

“Tell me what troubles you, my love. If you wish, we can wait until we are wed.”

For pique at his obtuseness, and to distract him, she almost reminded him that he had not proposed and she had not accepted. But that was hardly relevant to her dilemma. “I want us to be lovers, James. Now. Today, that is. But I have never done this before. Haverford never…” She took a deep breath and shut her eyes so that she did not have to seem him. That made it easier to explain. “In my marriage, I waited in bed. He visited. He pulled back the sheets, climbed on top, pushed himself into me, heaved a few times until he was done, and then left. I know there is more, and I trust you to show me, but James!” Her voice rose into a wail. “You have to tell me what to do!”

His voice was strained when he replied. “Give me a minute, beloved. I am fighting the urge to mount horse immediately, ride to Kent, fetch your husband out of his tomb, and kill him again.”

Her eyes flew open. Her lover’s face looked as if it had been hewn from granite, and his eyes blazed. His anger reassured her. James didn’t believe that her dismal experience of marital relations had been her fault. “A better revenge, I suspect, would be to thoroughly tup his wife.”

He laughed at that. “True. And show her the many ways that our bodies can give one another pleasure. Let me take you to Heaven, Eleanor. You don’t need to do a thing, but anything that occurs to you is good, too. Do whatever pleases you. And if anything I do does not please you, then tell me, and I will stop.”

It had worked. And it proved to be true that a man of his age had stamina and staying power. She smiled at her lover as she recalled her three occasions of pure bliss before he found his own completion.  “I was thinking that we should finish our tea then go back to bed and do it all again,” she said.

The proposition above is what James, the Duke of Winshire, said to Eleanor, the Duchess of Haverford, towards the end of Paradise At Last. Come on! It’s hardly a spoiler. You knew they were going to end up together, but what a journey they had to get there! Between the end of the last chapter of that book and the Epilogue that follows (a letter to her son who is on holiday in Europe), they clearly followed through on James’s suggestion, but I don’t show that in the book. So here is part of that scene. I left the bedroom door shut for the crucial part, because Eleanor is, after all, a lady and little shy about such things. Except, as it turns out, with James.

Paradise At Last is being published on March 15th, as part of Paradise Triptych, and is available on preorder.  Order now on https://books2read.com/Triptych

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Spotlight on Paradise Triptych

Long ago, when they were young, James and Eleanor were deeply in love. But their families tore them apart and they went on to marry other people.

Paradise Regained

James Winderfield yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father’s agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society — if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.
With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.
But the greatest threats to their marriage and their lives together is the widening distance between them. To win Paradise, they must face the truths in their hearts.

Paradise Lost

In 1812, the suitor Eleanor’s father rejected in favour of the Duke of Haverford has returned to England. He has been away for thirty-two years, and has returned a widower, and the father of ten children.
As the year passes, various events prompt Eleanor to turn to her box of keepsakes, which recall the momentous events of her life.
Paradise Lost is a series of vignettes grounded in 1812, in which Eleanor relives those memories.

Paradise At Last

Now Haverford is deceased nothing stands between the Duchess of Haverford and the Duke of Winshire. Except that James has not forgiven Eleanor for putting the dynasty of the Haverfords ahead of his niece’s happiness.
Can two star-crossed lovers find their happiness at last? Or will their own pride or the villain who wants to destroy the Haverfords stand in their way?

Paradise Triptych contains two novella and a set of memoirs: Paradise Regained (already published), Paradise Lost (distributed to my newsletter subscribers) and Paradise At Last (new for this collection).

Preorder now for 15th March: https://books2read.com/Triptych

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Tea with James

(Or brandy, to be precise. This is another excerpt post from Paradise at Last, which will be published as part of Paradise Triptych. It’s on preorder now and out in three weeks. In the excerpt, Eleanor has been sitting by Cherry’s bedside.)

When the clock struck the hour—three bongs—Ruth yawned and stood. “Go to bed, Your Grace. Get some sleep. Please send someone to sit with these two, and I will go to bed myself.”

Eleanor found a footman in the hall, waiting to take messages. She told him to find someone to replace Lady Asbury, and he said Lady Rosemary had asked to be fetched. He set off to knock on the lady’s door.

When he was out of sight, Eleanor realised that she had no idea which bedchamber she had been assigned. She set off for the guest wing on the other side of the stairwell, hoping a footman might be awake there to direct her. But as she crossed the upper landing, she saw light spilling from a doorway downstairs. Someone was in the drawing room.

Perhaps it was Rosemary. Eleanor should check, and if so, send her up to Ruth.

But when she entered the room, she found James sitting, staring into the embers, deep in thought. He must’ve heard her in the doorway, for he turned, stood, and took a step towards her. Whatever he saw on her face, he held out his arms and Eleanor ran into them and burst into tears.

***

James had no idea what kind of nonsense he spouted as he held Eleanor tenderly, supporting her weight with his arms around her, patting her back, letting the long hours of iron control loose in an abandonment of grief.

He had heard the reports, how she had taken charge at the scene of the accident. She did everything that needed to be done, except, perhaps, she could have thought to send someone after the assailant. All the reports he had received so far said the same thing—no one had a single clue that led anywhere.

He was thinking as a military commander. Eleanor’s focus was on Cherry, as it should have been—on getting her to help as quickly as possible. Then she spent fifteen hours supporting Cherry and Haverford through their ordeal—always calm, always encouraging, Ruth had said when he had met her on her way to bed.

The respect she had won from him since his return to England four years ago, that he thought lost, had returned full force.

Eventually, the stormy tears settled to a quieter weeping. He coaxed her to the chair by the fire and sat, settling her on his knee. He wiped her eyes with his handkerchief. She rested against him, totally spent, occasionally hiccupping another sob. “I have made your shoulder all wet,” she murmured.

“Not for the first time,” James assured her. “I have four daughters, remember.” Although it had been years since his had been their favoured shoulder when life was too cruel to bear. He had not held a woman in his arms for a long time, and this one was not his daughter. Tired as he was, his body reminded him that he desired her.

He shifted her slightly away from the evidence of his inappropriate response. “Would you like a port or a brandy? Something to help you sleep?”

She chuckled. “I will sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. But I don’t know which room my things are in. I saw the light and came to see if it was someone who could direct me.” She reached and cupped his face with her hand, and he had to exert an iron control not to turn his mouth into her palm and kiss it. He would not seduce her while she was so emotionally raw.

And his mind raced on to a future time, when she was not so vulnerable. For he would seduce her. Yes, and marry her, too, if she would have him.

She was speaking again, and he must pay attention. “I did not intend to weep all over you. I apologise, James.”

“It was my privilege. You have carried your family today; I am proud to be the person you did not have to be strong for. I think, perhaps, you do not realise how amazing you are, for it is what you always do. It is I who should apologise to you, for my cruel words and my coldness after your mistake with Cherry and your son. I hope you will forgive me for being such a self-righteous idiot. My female relatives have pointed out that I am not so perfect myself that I have a right to demand perfection from my friends. Can we be friends again, Eleanor? Will you forgive me?”

The tears welled again but she smiled as she dashed at them with his handkerchief. “I am not usually such a watering pot,” she complained. “James, if you can forgive me, I can forgive you.

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Tea with Lord Colyton’s daughters

(Another excerpt post from Paradise at Last)

Colyton’s mother and Colyton’s three daughters arrived in London several days before the wedding. Lady Colyton had been living retired in the country for some years and had never moved in the same circles as Eleanor, so a dinner Cherry hosted was the first opportunity that Jessica’s family had to meet the lady.

“Perhaps she was over-awed by her company,” Cherry said, charitably, the following morning.

“Yes, perhaps.” Eleanor voiced the agreement, but privately thought that Lady Colyton thought herself too good for the company. The brief and rare comments she had made were all animadversions about the morals of the fashionable world.

Jessica had no concerns. “I am not marrying Colyton’s mother, Aunt Eleanor.” She shrugged. “Colyton says she will be moving to a townhouse in Cheltenham as soon as we are wed. I will be there to supervise the children and the servants, so she will no longer be needed.”

If Colyton’s mother was less than happy about the marriage, his daughters were ecstatic. Eleanor had asked to meet them, and Colyton brought them for afternoon tea with Eleanor, Cherry, Jessica, and her sisters. The three little girls were polite, but very quiet. However, when Jessica asked if they would be her attendants at the wedding, along with Frances, the youngest girl pounced on her heels with glee. The eldest cast an anxious glance at their father. The middle child piped up, “Grandmere says that children do not go to weddings. Children should not be heard, and preferably not seen.”

Jessica met Colyford’s eyes as she said, “I am sure your grandmother will agree that on her wedding day a bride has a right to decide who comes to the wedding. Unless your father forbids it,” and an incipient glare hinted that he would be in for an argument if he tried, “you shall come to my wedding.”

Colyton frowned.

Eleanor could not resist. “Perhaps Lady Colyton, living retired as she does, does not realise that the rules are different for close relatives of the bride and groom. When the Earl and Countess of Ashbury married, his daughters were her attendants, and at the time, they were younger than any of you.”

“Yes, and my nephew was at my wedding,” Cherry said.

Colyton inclined his head. “How can I refuse my bride? I shall speak with Mother.”