And since when had she needed anyone to cling to in abject dependence?

“Of course I will not mind,” she said. “Enjoy yourself.”

He rolled off the bed and got to his feet.

“Lauren will take care of you,” he said.

“Of course she will,” she said. The viscountess was very beautiful, very elegant, very proper. She had also been kind-even after David’s disastrous announcement.

“When Kit first brought her here as his betrothed,” Sydnam told her, “he and I were bitterly estranged. I’ll explain it all to you one day. Lauren singled me out one day, determined to have a talk with me, and it was clear I was not her favorite person in the world. But she listened to me-really listened. She was the first person during all those years of turmoil to do that and to understand my point of view. She forced a confrontation between Kit and me. Both of us were reluctant, awkward, and sheepish. But it worked. Lauren is one of my favorite people. She even kissed me here once.” He tapped his forefinger against his right cheek.

“Did she?” Anne said.

“Jealous?”

“Mortally.”

They smiled at each other, and Anne knew that one thing at least had not died last night. He was still her friend. It was not much to cling to, perhaps, when they were a married couple, but it was definitely something. And she was quite determined to begin this new day with optimism.

“If you get dressed immediately or sooner,” he said, “we can go down to breakfast together.”

It was only as they were descending the stairs ten minutes later that Anne realized there had been no nausea yet this morning. She had been too preoccupied to give it a chance, she supposed.

The rest of the day proceeded far more smoothly than Anne had feared it might. The men left the breakfast table early, and the countess addressed Anne as soon as they were out of earshot.

“We were worried for you as well as Sydnam last night, Anne,” she said. “Oh, and a little annoyed with you too for shutting the door in our faces when I daresay you have had no experience of dealing with my son after he has had one of his nightmares. But we did not hear another sound, and this morning he is as cheerful and full of energy as I have ever seen him. He is usually tired and listless the day after. How did you do it?”

“I merely wrapped him up warmly and held him until he had stopped shaking,” Anne said, feeling herself flush.

Her mother-in-law looked steadily at her without smiling.

“He was foolish,” she said, “so very foolish to go to war-just to prove that he was as brave as Kit.”

“Which he did indeed prove, you must admit, Mother,” Lauren said.

“But at such a tragic cost,” the countess said. “He was very talented, Anne. Did you know that?”

“As a painter?” Anne said. “Yes, I did.”

“Not just talented,” the countess said, “but consumed by the dream of being a great painter. Why on earth he put that dream at risk by going to the Peninsula I will never understand.”

“Sometimes,” Anne said, “men who are quiet and artistic feel the need to prove their masculinity, especially when they are very young, as Sydnam was. What better way to prove it than by going to war?”

All three women shook their heads at the foolishness of the male of the species, and it struck Anne suddenly that her decision to stay with Sydnam last night when Kit had been prepared to deal with him had actually endeared her to his family. Perhaps after all they would come to accept her and understand that she had not schemed to marry a wealthy, well-connected man.

“Do any of his paintings still exist?” she asked.

Lady Redfield sighed.

“They used to hang all over the house,” she said. “But after he was brought back here and long before he was able to leave his own rooms he commanded us to destroy every one of them. Yes, our gentle son commanded us. They are stacked up in the attic with his old easels and painting supplies. I have sometimes thought of hanging one or two of them again now that he has gone from Alvesley, but I cannot bring myself to do what I believe would still be against his wishes. And I am not sure I would be able to bear to see any of them after so long.”

“But Sydnam is not a tragic figure,” Lauren said, smiling at Anne. “You must have discovered that for yourself, Anne. He has made a meaningful new life for himself, difficult as it has been with his disabilities. And now he has a wife and family for his personal happiness.”

Her smile seemed to possess genuine warmth.

“You will come visiting with Lauren and me this afternoon, Anne,” the countess said in a tone that brooked no contradiction. “You must be presented to our neighbors, and the hasty, secret nature of your marriage must be somehow explained. We will not take your son with us.”

Lauren laughed softly and got to her feet.

“David is delightful,” she said. “He was playing with Andrew and Sophie when I went up to the nursery to feed Geoffrey last evening and even settled a quarrel between them before I could intervene. Shall we go up there now, Anne?”

They spent the rest of the morning there, though there was no need to amuse the children. Andrew was clearly delighted to have an older cousin willing and able to build an impressive castle with him out of painted wooden bricks, and Sophia was content with gazing at her new cousin and edging closer to him until she was able to reach out and touch his hair. David turned and smiled at her, and she was permitted to hand him the bricks, though Andrew forbade her to touch the castle.

David was simply happy.

Geoffrey, plump and contented, lay in Anne’s arms after he had been fed, his eyelids fighting a losing battle with sleep. He had his mother’s startlingly violet eyes, she noticed.

“I think,” Lauren said after a while, “it is going to be remarkably pleasant to have another sister. And for my children to have another aunt and more cousins.”

“You have sisters of your own, then?” Anne asked.

“Cousins by marriage, with whom I grew up,” Lauren told her. “I still think of Gwen as a sister and of her brother Neville as my brother. I almost married him at one time. Indeed, I had arrived at the church for our wedding.”

Anne stared at her. “What happened?” she asked.

Lauren told her about the death of her father, Viscount Whitleaf, when she was an infant and her mother’s remarriage within the year to a younger brother of the Earl of Kilbourne. She told of her mother’s leaving on a wedding trip overseas and never returning, though they were now back in communication with each other. Lauren had grown up in the Earl of Kilbourne’s home with the earl’s son and daughter and the expectation that she and Neville would wed when they were grown up. Neville went to war and told her not to wait for him, but she waited anyway, and eventually he came home and courted her and their wedding day dawned. But just as she arrived at the church, another woman-a woman who looked like a beggar-arrived there too, claiming that Neville was her husband, that he had married her in the Peninsula.

“And the ghastly thing was,” Lauren said, running one hand softly over the almost-bald head of her sleeping baby as he lay in Anne’s arms, “that she was telling the truth.”

“Oh,” Anne said. “Oh, poor Lauren.”

“I thought the world had come to an end,” Lauren admitted. “As I was growing up my adoptive family could not have been kinder to me if I had been a daughter of the house, but I was always aware that I was not. I spent my growing years trying to be worthy, trying to be lovable-though I already was loved. And all I ever wanted of life was to marry Neville.”

The refined and perfect Lauren had known unbearable pain too, then, Anne thought. Everyone had, she supposed, at some time in life. It was always a mistake to believe that one had been singled out for unusual suffering.