Yet still there was only a strange numbness at his core.
Work was the answer. The forgetfulness of purposeful work. He left the curricle at the livery stables and took Bea’s lace-gloved hand in his to lead her out into the lane. She went with him without a murmur, her doll tucked under her other arm.
‘I won’t be long at the lawyer’s office, Bea,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want to visit the toy shop, perhaps we could get a sweet afterwards? You haven’t had one of those lemon drops you like in a while.’
‘Thank you, Papa,’ she murmured.
Their progress down the street was slow, as several people stopped David to offer him greetings or ask questions about his plans for Rose Hill. He hadn’t been home long enough for curiosity to fade about his London scandal, and he could almost feel the burn of curiosity in people’s eyes as they talked to him. He could hear the careful tones of their voices, from people he had known since he was a child.
Even here the upheaval of his life couldn’t quite be forgotten.
As they walked past the assembly rooms, he heard his sister’s voice call out to him.
‘David, dearest! I didn’t know you were coming to the village today. You should have sent me word and I would have made you dine with us before you go back to Rose Hill,’ Louisa cried.
David turned to see his sister hurrying toward him, her two little sons tumbling after her and her pregnant belly before her. The boys were shoving and tripping each other, as they so often did, and David felt Bea stiffen next to him.
‘I didn’t want you to go to any trouble, Louisa,’ he said as he kissed her offered cheek under the flowered edge of her bonnet.
‘No trouble at all. We see you too seldom,’ Louisa answered. She carefully bent down and embraced Bea, who still held her little body very still. ‘And how lovely you look today, Beatrice! My, but I do hope this one will be a girl. Boys, stop that fighting right now! Bow to your uncle.’
As the boys quickly bowed and muttered before shoving each other again, Louisa whispered in David’s ear, ‘Beatrice is looking awfully pale, isn’t she? You should leave her with me while you conclude your business, she can play with her cousins. I’m sure she is too much alone at Rose Hill.’
Beatrice seemed to hear her and gave David an alarmed glance. ‘Thank you for the kind offer, Louisa, but we must return home very soon today. Another time, I promise.’
Louisa sniffed. ‘As you like, of course. But you know what Rose Hill and Beatrice need is more children running about the halls there! New little siblings, as you and I were. Have you met Miss Harding yet? She has come to stay with her uncle, Admiral Harding, and I quite admire her already. So pretty, so steady. Just what you need.’
Bea didn’t say anything, or even move, but David felt her hand tighten on his. ‘No, I have not yet met Miss Harding.’
‘Then you must come to the assembly next week. She is sure to be there and I have sung your praises to her already.’
‘I still have so much work to do at Rose Hill...’
‘Don’t say you must work all night as well as all day! You must get out in the world again, David. It would do you so much good. And you will never find a wife if you stay alone at Rose Hill all the time. Will he, Beatrice darling?’
‘No, Aunt Louisa,’ Bea said dutifully.
‘Of course not. Now, David, let me tell you about Miss Harding...’
Louisa went on talking, but David’s attention was suddenly captured by a figure hurrying along the walkway on the other side of the street.
She wasn’t very tall, but was very straight and slender, with an elegant bearing and purpose to her step that seemed somehow familiar. Yet he was sure she couldn’t be someone he knew, for she wore a black gown and pelisse and a plain black bonnet, and there were no recent widows in the village. Still, something about her compelled him to keep watching. Something vital and almost magnetic, something—alive.
David suddenly realised he hadn’t felt alive in a very long time. Hadn’t felt captured by something as he was by the glimpses of the lady in black.
Others, too, watched her as she passed them, turned to stare at her, stopped in their tracks. But only a few actually offered her a greeting.
She stopped at the window of Mr Lorne’s bookshop and, as she turned to examine the haphazard display of dusty volumes behind the cloudy glass, David caught a glimpse of her pale profile against the black ruching of her bonnet, as pure and perfect as a Grecian coin.
‘Emma Bancroft,’ he whispered, shocked by the sight of her. Now that he saw her again, he was surprised at how completely he recalled a girl he hadn’t glimpsed in years. But where he felt a hundred years older than the man he had been at that long-ago assembly, Emma Bancroft looked exactly the same. Golden, sunny curls, a straight little nose dusted with pale amber freckles, rosebud lips curved in a smile as she studied the books. She looked just as young, just as eager to run out and grab life.
Yet she, too, must have faced a great deal since they last met, swathed in black as she was. She pushed open the door to the shop and vanished inside, and David’s strangely silent, suspended moment crashed around him. The noisy bustle of the crowd. Bea’s hand in his. The ceasing of his sister’s stream of chatter.
‘Oh, yes,’ Louisa said with another sniff. ‘Emma Bancroft. I did hear she had returned to Barton Park, though I’m surprised her sister would have her back after everything that happened. Hardly befitting the sister-in-law of an earl.’
David gave her a curious glance and Louisa smiled smugly. She always liked having gossip other people did not and David had lived buried in his own business since he came home. ‘You will remember, I am sure, David. Or perhaps you won’t, you are always so very busy. Do you not recall her infamous elopement with Mr Henry Carrington?’
David did remember vague whispers about it all. Emma Bancroft eloped with a known rake in her first Season, against her sister’s advice. Word of it had floated all the way from London back to Rose Hill, everyone saying how sad it was, but really not very surprising. Miss Bancroft, after all, had always been such an odd girl with strange fancies. Other scandals soon eclipsed it, and by the time David went to London with Maude and their new baby there were only a few titters about Lady Ramsay’s wayward sister. He assumed the rake and Miss Bancroft had settled into a reasonable marriage, away from England.
And Maude’s own scandal soon quite overtook everything else. But David felt strangely disappointed when he remembered Miss Bancroft’s—Mrs Carrington’s—true nature. For an instant there, he was actually happy to glimpse her coming down the street, felt a rush of hope. Now the sunny, lively vibrancy he had imagined seemed more hoydenish and dangerously unpredictable.
He couldn’t afford any more scandal in his life. Either his own or that of others.
‘They say Mr Carrington died in a duel somewhere in France,’ Louisa said. ‘Now I suppose Lady Ramsay has no choice but to shelter her sister.’
As David had always had no choice in his own family? Faintly irritated, he said, ‘Perhaps you think she should have left her sister in a Parisian workhouse.’
‘David! You are quite shocking today. Of course Lady Ramsay had to take Mrs Carrington in, though it would have been more politic of Mrs Carrington to stay away after the stir she caused. But family is family, I suppose. I just hope she will stay quietly at Barton Park and not embarrass anyone.’
‘I must attend to my business, Louisa,’ he said, feeling the urge to defend Emma Bancroft, even from something indefensible. ‘The lawyer is expecting me so we can go over my purchase of the lands adjacent to Rose Hill.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I know you are so terribly busy, David dear. Just don’t forget about Miss Harding! We shall all be expecting you at the assembly next week.’
Murmuring some