‘And you’re a wife and mother, Mary Carlinge, and should know better.’
‘I may have wed Carlinge when I was hardly out of the schoolroom,’ Mary said blithely, sparing her husband of six years a fond but dismissive glance, ‘but your Mr Winterley is still worth a second look, then a third and fourth for good measure.’
‘He isn’t mine and he knows he’s attractive and well-bred and a fine prize on the marriage mart a little too well for my taste,’ Rowena replied as coolly as she could when the wretched man’s unusual green eyes flicked back to eye her speculatively.
She had thought herself all but invisible in the shadow of an ancient yew tree, until Mary tracked her down and insisted on asking impossible questions. Now he was watching them as if Rowena might put a toad down his back if he didn’t keep an eye on her. A decade and a half ago she certainly would have, but it was unthinkable for a sober widow to do anything of the kind.
‘Now I like a man who knows his own worth. I’d wager my best bonnet that one is a fine and considerate lover as well,’ Mary insisted on telling her, although Rowena didn’t want to know her friend’s innermost secrets. ‘When I finally manage to give Carlinge another son I do hope I’m still young and attractive enough to find out for myself, as long as some discerning female hasn’t snapped him up in the meantime.’
‘Oh, Mary, no; that’s an awful thing to say. We were only confessing our sins before God a matter of minutes ago. You can’t possibly mean it.’
‘Shush,’ Mary Carlinge replied and took a look round to make sure nobody was close enough to hear the vicar’s eldest daughter being shocked by things she really shouldn’t admit out loud. ‘It’s as well you lurk in dark corners nowadays and do your best not to be taken notice of. Is that a habit you learnt at your mama-in-law’s knee, by the way? If so, it’s a good thing she’s taken it into her head to go and live with her sister and abandon you to your fate, because you would have stayed with her otherwise and become a boring little widow who breeds small dogs and keeps weavers of iron grey worsted in luxuries.’
‘This particular shade is called dove grey, I will have you know, and it was kind of Mama Westhope to take me in when I came back from Portugal with little more than the clothes I stood up in. I stayed longer than either of us intended because she was so prostrate with grief I couldn’t bring myself to leave, but it was only until we felt more able to cope with Nate’s death,’ Rowena defended herself and her late husband’s mother, but she had a feeling Mary was right this time all the same.
‘Kind my foot, she made use of you, Row.’ Her old friend put aside her sophisticated woman-of-the-world manner for a moment to lecture. ‘You were little more than her unpaid skivvy and I doubt she’s let a single day of the last two years go by without reproaching you for being alive when her darling is dead. No, you have been cried at and belittled for quite long enough, my friend. It’s high time you learnt to live again and there’s the very man you should begin doing it with,’ she concluded with a triumphant wave of the hand to where Mr Winterley was standing with a less-distinguished gentleman doing his best not to know he was all but forgotten at his fellow guest’s side.
‘Who is the gentleman in the brown coat, Mary? You’ve become such a fount of information since you persuaded Mr Carlinge to live in his great-uncle’s house instead of selling it when he inherited and staying in Bristol.’
‘It’s healthier for the children, but are you calling me a gossip?’ Mary asked sharply. She seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then shrugged and grinned impishly, as if the truth of that silent accusation was undeniable, and Rowena remembered why she loved her old friend, despite her forthright tongue and interfering ways. ‘You’re quite right, of course. What else is there to do in the country but take an interest in your neighbours and watch grass grow? The man in that rather dull coat is the Honourable Mr Bowood and his father must be Lord Grisbeigh, who is the sort of mysterious grandee the government pretend not to have. He would have to admit to working if they did and we all know gentlemen don’t do that.’
Since Mr Carlinge was an attorney and Mary sounded a little bitter about the social distinctions that fed into, Rowena turned the subject to Mary’s little son and baby daughter and tried to listen to their doting mother’s description of their latest sayings and doings with all her attention and wipe Mr Winterley from her thoughts. For all her talk of taking lovers and the dullness of her life, she was almost certain Mary loved her workaday Mr Carlinge and their lively children far too much to take a risk with fashionably bored Mr Winterley. Or at least Rowena hoped so for her friend’s sake, not because the man was tall and broad shouldered and rather fascinating and stirred something in her she’d rather leave unstirred.
‘So this is where you’re hiding today, is it, Rowena Finch?’ the clear tones of her other friend from the old days interrupted Mary’s tale of teething and breeching and now she had two pairs of acute female eyes on her instead of one. Rowena shifted under Calliope, Lady Laughraine’s dark gaze and flushed ridiculously as Callie’s words drew the attention of the very man she’d been trying to avoid.
He looked like a Byzantine prince dressed as a gentleman of fashion and plonked down in an English village to overawe the locals, she decided fancifully. There was a sense of power and fine self-control about him that almost offended her somehow. It was hard to say truthfully how she felt about the interloper, even if a nice little competence and a more useful life than the one she had now depended on it, but no matter, she was done with handsome gentlemen and he would never seriously look her way even if she wasn’t. She was a dull and impoverished widow of the very middling sort and he was the brother of a viscount who looked about as tricky and handsome as the devil and that was that.
‘I’m not Rowena Finch any longer, as you know perfectly well, Lady Laughraine,’ she pointed out with a stern look for the woman she’d known ever since she could remember.
Callie was the last Vicar of Raigne’s granddaughter and had come to live with him as a tiny baby. When the Finch family arrived at Great Raigne, so Papa could be installed there as the Reverend Sommers’s curate, Rowena was a toddler and her brother Joshua a babe in arms. Callie was an elder sister she never had to long for, because she had one already, rather than a friend.
‘I do, although marriage doesn’t seem to have done you much good,’ Callie said in a voice low enough only to be heard by the three of them.
Mary nodded militantly. ‘Callie’s right, you should listen to her,’ she said and finally took notice of her husband’s repeated signals that their carriage was waiting and it was high time they went home. ‘I only hope you can make her see sense and come out of her shell, my lady. Rowena won’t listen to me and you always were better at getting her to see reason than I am. Only because you’re the eldest, you understand? Not because you’re Lady Laughraine and all set to be a power in the land as soon as you’re not quite so busy being Gideon’s wife we hardly ever see you now you’re finally home.’
‘Very well and I will try to be less busy and make time for my friends. Now go away and let me have my turn at bullying Row for her own good, Mary; your poor, put-upon husband will teach you a lesson and go without you one day if you’re not careful.’
‘I’ll go, then, since everyone is so keen to be rid of me. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on you and a certain gentleman, Rowena Westhope, so don’t imagine I’ll let you do so either.’
‘It’s as well she’s gone while we still have a little patience and affection left for her,’ Callie observed with a roll of her eyes after the friend they both loved and despaired of in equal measure. ‘Mary says outrageous things to disguise the fact she’s very content as a country wife and mother. It really is most unfashionable of her, apparently.’
‘A lapse you will shortly be sharing,’ Rowena said with a rather anxious look at her friend’s pale face