Mary Balogh - Simply Love

Anne smiled down at her son as they waited for the butler to open the door. He was growing up fast, she thought ruefully. He was no longer an infant.

He behaved rather like one, though, when they stepped inside and could see that the marquess was coming down the stairs to meet them, grinning cheerfully. David dashed toward him, all childish eagerness and voluble chatter, and was swept off his feet and spun about in a circle while he laughed joyfully.

Anne, looking on, felt an almost painful constriction about the heart. She had poured out a mother’s love on her son for nine years, but of course she had never been able to provide him with a father’s love too.

“Lad,” the marquess said, setting David back down on his feet, “you must have a few bricks in the sole of each shoe. You weigh a ton. Or maybe it is just that you are growing up. Let me see now. You must be…twelve?”

“No!” David chuckled gleefully.

“Never tell me you are thirteen?”

“No! I am nine !”

“Nine? Only nine? I am speechless with amazement.” The marquess ruffled David’s hair with one hand and turned his smile on Anne.

“Joshua,” she said, “how good it is to see you.”

He was a tall, well-formed man, with blond hair, a handsome, good-natured face, and blue eyes that almost constantly smiled. Anne had always loved him with feelings that had occasionally bordered on the romantic, though she had never allowed them to spill over into passion. As plain Joshua Moore he had also been her friend when she was a governess at his aunt and uncle’s house and after she had been dismissed. His friendship had been of infinitely more worth to her than any unrequited passion might have been.

Besides, she had loved another man when she first became acquainted with Joshua Moore. She had even had an understanding with that man and considered herself betrothed to him.

“Anne.” He took both her hands in his and squeezed them tightly. “You are in remarkably good looks. The Bath air must suit you.”

“It does,” she assured him. “How is Lady Hallmere? And how are the children?”

“Freyja is in the drawing room,” he said. “You will see her in a moment. Daniel and Emily are with their nurse upstairs. You must see them before you leave. Daniel has declared at least two dozen times in the last hour that he simply cannot wait another moment for David to come.” He looked at David with an apologetic grin. “A three-year-old will not be much of a playmate for you, lad, but if you can find it in your heart to entertain him for a short while, or to allow him to entertain you, you will make him the happiest child alive.”

“I would love to play with him, sir,” David said.

“Good lad.” Joshua ruffled his hair again. “But come and pay your respects in the drawing room first. It is only very young children who are whisked off straight to the nursery and you certainly do not fall into that category, do you?”

“No, sir,” David said as Joshua offered Anne his arm and winked at her.

Lady Potford received them graciously in the drawing room, and Lady Hallmere got to her feet to nod in acknowledgment of David’s bow and to look assessingly at Anne.

“You look well, Miss Jewell,” she said.

“Thank you, Lady Hallmere,” Anne said, curtsying to her.

She had always found the marchioness rather intimidating, with her small stature and strange, rather harsh, rather handsome features. She had disliked her on first acquaintance and considered her quite unsuited to the kindhearted, easygoing Joshua. But then she had discovered that her former pupil, Lady Prudence Moore, Joshua’s mentally handicapped cousin, adored Lady Freyja, who had been unexpectedly kind to her. Prue had always been a good judge of character. And then Lady Freyja, recognizing that Anne was living only a half-existence as an unwed mother and would-be teacher in the small fishing village of Lydmere, had appeared on her doorstep one morning and offered her a position at Miss Martin’s school, of which she was the anonymous benefactor.

If Claudia Martin ever discovered that truth, there would be trouble! Anne had, of course, been sworn to secrecy.

She had grown to respect, like, and even admire Lady Hallmere-and her marriage to Joshua appeared to be a love match.

For several minutes David was the focus of attention as he answered questions, seated beside Joshua and gazing almost worshipfully up at his hero. Then, just before the tea tray was brought in, he was sent up to the nursery, where he was promised fairy cakes and lemonade.

“We have just come from Lindsey Hall,” Joshua explained to Anne as the tea was being poured, “and a grand family celebration for the christening of Bewcastle’s son and heir.”

“I trust he is a healthy child,” Anne said politely, “and that the duchess has recovered her health.”

“Both.” Joshua grinned. “I do believe the new Marquess of Lindsey is going to be worthy of the Bedwyn name. He has a powerful set of lungs and has no hesitation at all in using them to get whatever he wishes.”

“And now,” Lady Hallmere added, “we are all on our way to Wales for a month. Bewcastle has an estate there and was planning a brief visit. But the duchess insisted upon accompanying him, and then we all decided to go too since it was far too soon to disperse and go our separate ways.”

“A holiday by the sea is a pleasant prospect,” Joshua said with a grin, “despite the fact that we live within a stone’s throw of it in Cornwall. But the Bedwyns are not often all together, and all our children were in such transports of delight at having one another with whom to play and quarrel at Lindsey Hall that it seemed almost cruel to deprive them of one another’s company for a month or so longer.”

How lovely it must be, Anne thought wistfully, to belong to a large, close-knit, boisterous family. How lovely for the children.

“School has finished for the year, Miss Jewell?” Lady Potford asked.

“Most of the girls went home yesterday, ma’am,” Anne told her.

“And will you be going home too?” Lady Potford asked.

“No, ma’am,” Anne said. “I will remain at the school. Miss Martin takes in charity pupils as well as paying ones, and they must be cared for through the holidays.”

Of course, there was no need for Claudia, Susanna, and Anne all to remain. But none of them had anywhere else to go unless their close friend Frances Marshall, Countess of Edgecombe, a former teacher at the school, arrived home from the Continent, where she had gone with the earl on a singing tour, and invited one of them to Barclay Court in Somersetshire, as she often did whenever she was at home during a school holiday.

“You still have not been home, then, Anne?” Joshua asked.

“No,” she said.

Not since the year before David was born-more than ten years ago now. It was a long time. She had been only nineteen then, her sister Sarah, seventeen. Matthew, their brother, now a clergyman, a mere twenty-year-old, had still been up at Oxford. Henry Arnold had just turned twenty at that time too-she had been home for his birthday. They had spoken of his coming-of-age birthday the following year, and she had felt no premonition at all of the fact that she would not be there for that occasion-or ever see him again, in fact.

“We have a request to make of you, Anne,” Joshua said.

“Oh?” Anne looked from him to Lady Hallmere and back again.

“I am increasingly aware,” Joshua said with a sigh, “that David is my blood relative, Anne, my cousin.”

“No!” Anne stiffened. “He is my son.”

“And he would have had my title too,” Joshua continued, “and everything that came along with it, if Albert had married you.”