“And then a year later,” Lauren said, “I met Kit. We did not by any means have a smooth courtship, but it did not take me very long to understand why Lily had had to come back into Neville’s life and why I had had to be cut adrift. Fate was saving me for Kit. I do believe in fate, Anne-not a blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.”

“Oh,” Anne said, “I believe that too. I really do.”

“Fate led you to meet Sydnam and he you, I daresay,” Lauren said. “Despite appearances-forgive me!-I can see quite clearly that you are fond of each other.”

They smiled at each other, and soon the conversation moved into other channels, but Anne felt enormously comforted, as if some blessing had been bestowed. She felt that she and her sister-in-law would be friends-perhaps even sisters.

And her mother-in-law had looked on her with approval for staying with Sydnam last night and was to take her visiting this afternoon.

Perhaps families did not always reject. Perhaps at least sometimes they opened their arms in welcome. Perhaps sometimes love was to be trusted.

Sydnam’s day started well enough.

It started with hope. Anne had smiled this morning and even joked with him. She had not repeated her wish to go home without further delay, and she had not objected to being left alone with Lauren and his mother. He and she were, he thought, still friends. And for a while he was content-he must be content-with friendship and with a mutual compassion for the dark places in each other’s life.

The morning proceeded well as he rode about the home farm with his father and Kit, meeting farmworkers and their wives whom he had not seen in years, since he had been steward here, in fact. It was all very enjoyable.

But the afternoon brought home to him a reality that depressed him and might, he feared, put yet another strain on his marriage. Anne had been taken visiting by his mother and Lauren. He went up to the nursery while she was gone to suggest taking David-and the other children too, if they wished-for a walk about the lake. But Kit was there before him to take Andrew out for a riding lesson.

“You must come too, David,” he said.

“But I cannot ride,” the boy protested.

“You have never ridden?” Kit said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “We are going to have to set that right without any further delay.”

“Will you teach me, Uncle Kit?” David asked, his face lighting up with eagerness.

“What are uncles for?” Kit said, grinning down at him. “You will come too, Syd?”

A few minutes later they were all on their way out to the stables, David and Andrew dashing ahead, Sophia riding on Kit’s arm.

A groom mounted Andrew on his little pony in the paddock behind the stables while Kit chose a quiet mare for David and then taught him some of the rudiments of riding before mounting him and leading him about the paddock and finally allowing him to take a slow turn on his own while walking beside him, calling up instructions and encouragement.

David was as animated and excited as Sydnam had seen him once or twice at Glandwr with the Bedwyn men and Hallmere. And he laughed and chattered, quite at his ease with Kit, calling him Uncle Kit as though the two of them had been the best of friends for years.

If David had already had even some small experience at riding, Sydnam thought, he himself might have ridden with the boy and taught him some of the finer points of horsemanship as they went. The shared activity would have offered a chance for them to forge some sort of familial bond. But under the circumstances it had seemed more practical to leave the teaching to his brother, though Kit had looked inquiringly at him before proceeding with the lesson.

Instead Sydnam made friends with Sophia, who had been plucking daisy heads from the grass beyond the paddock and now patted Sydnam on the leg and handed him the bouquet. He stooped down on his haunches to thank her, but though she looked warily at his eye patch, she did not run away. Instead, she suddenly reached out one small finger to touch it and then chuckled.

“Funny, is it?” he said. “Is Uncle Syd funny?”

She chuckled again, a happy infant sound.

They spent the next half hour picking daisies and buttercups together.

When it came time for them all to return to the house and Kit would have picked her up, Sophia shook her soft curls quite firmly and lifted her arms to Sydnam. He gave her their flowers to hold and scooped her up on his arm, and Andrew trotted along beside them asking Sydnam what it had felt like to have his arm chopped off.

But David walked with Kit, still animated and chattering after his first riding lesson. And when they arrived back at the nursery and found Anne waiting for them there, looking flushed and lovely in one of her smartest new dresses, the boy rushed to her to tell her of his accomplishments, the name Uncle Kit prominent on his lips.

It was small consolation to Sydnam that Sophia patted his leg again in order to show him one of her dolls.

He had missed an opportunity to be the sort of father his stepson craved. Yet he could have done it. He could have taught David to mount without having to lift him bodily onto the horse’s back. But he had allowed himself to feel inferior to Kit and so had held back. He mentally kicked himself now that it was too late.

He could only urge patience on himself. Perhaps next time he would not miss such a chance.

His resolve was put to the test later that very day-and for a while it wavered again.

Anne had gone upstairs after dinner to tell David a story, as she always did at bedtime, and to tuck him into bed for the night. Sydnam hesitated for a while, having been aware on the evening of his wedding in Bath that the boy had resented his intrusion into the ritual, but then followed her up. His father was reading in the drawing room and his mother was engrossed in her embroidery. Lauren was also up in the nursery feeding Geoffrey, and Kit had gone with her.

Sydnam let himself quietly into David’s room after tapping on the open door and sat in a chair somewhat removed from the bed while Anne told her story. He smiled when she broke off, as she had done in Bath, at a particularly suspenseful point in the narrative. He did not say anything this time, though.

“Mama!” the boy protested, as he had then.

“More tomorrow night,” she said, getting to her feet and bending over him to kiss him. “As always.”

Sydnam noticed that Kit had come to stand in the doorway.

“Mothers can be the cruelest of creatures, David,” he said with a wink. “They should be made to finish a story once they have started it. There ought to be a law. Are you going to come riding again tomorrow? Maybe beyond the paddock this time?”

“Yes, please, Uncle Kit,” David said. “But most of all I want to paint. He…my…Mr. Butler bought me oil paints and lots of other things in Bath, but I cannot use them because there is no one to show me how. Can you show me? Can Aunt Lauren? Please?”

He had sat up in bed and was gazing pleadingly at Kit.

Kit glanced at Sydnam-rather as he had done in the paddock earlier.

“I was never a painter, David,” he said. “Neither is Aunt Lauren-not in oils anyway. I cannot think of anyone close by who is. Except…” He glanced at Sydnam again and raised his eyebrows.

Sydnam gripped the arm of his chair with his left hand. He felt suddenly dizzy.

And then he could see that David, still sitting up in bed, had turned his attention to him too and was gazing imploringly at him.