“It is young people whose lives are expected to be tumultuous a time or two before they settle,” she said. “It is they who are supposed to need the calm comfort of a mother’s wisdom. Our roles appear to have been reversed lately. I am so sorry, Abigail. I will do better. It feels good to be going home, does it not?” She reached for her daughter’s hand.

“I thought you loved him,” Abigail said. “I thought he loved you. Perhaps I am too much of a romantic.”

“What I am is selfish,” Viola said. “Your life would have undergone great upheaval yet again if I really had been serious about marrying.”

“Yes.” Abigail frowned. “But, Mama, a woman does not have children in order to give up her life and happiness for their sake, does she? Why is it selfish for her to want to do her own living too?”

Viola squeezed her hand. “You see what I mean about our roles reversing?” she said.

“The point is,” Abigail said, “that Camille found her own way forward. Grandmama and I were horrified when she decided to take employment as a teacher at the orphanage, and we were even more upset when she decided to go and live there. But—she found her way all on her own. She found Joel and Winifred and Sarah and she has had Jacob and, Mama, I believe she is as happy as it is possible to be in a life that is always changing.”

“You are saying that I am not as important as I sometimes think I am?” Viola asked ruefully. “But you are quite right. Harry chose a military career, and Avery made it possible for him by purchasing his commission.”

“Oh, you are more important than anything,” Abigail cried. “But as a mother. All we want is your love, Mama, and the chance to love you. We must do our living ourselves, just as you have always done, and as I hope you will always do.”

Viola sighed. “But what of you, Abby?” she asked. “You were deprived of the chance to make your come-out during a London Season and of the chance to make a suitable marriage. You were—”

“Mama,” Abigail said, “I do not know what my life will be. But I am the one who must and will live it. I do not expect you to organize it for me or make decisions and plans for me or . . . or anything. It is my life and you must not worry.”

“You might more easily get me to stop breathing,” Viola said, and smiled.

Abigail smiled back, and for some strange reason they found her words uproariously funny and laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks.

“Mama,” Abigail asked, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, “do you love him?”

Viola curbed the easy answer she had been about to give. She sighed as she put her own handkerchief away in her reticule. “Yes, I do,” she said. “But it is not enough, Abby. He does not love me, or at least not in any way that would allow for a lifelong relationship. He is not the sort of man who can settle to anything or with anyone. He was once upon a time, perhaps, but he changed after his wife’s untimely death, and too much time has passed to enable him to change back or to change at all in essential ways. We never expected permanence, you know, when we decided to go away together for a week or two. I needed to . . . escape for a while, and he is always ready for an adventure that will bring him some pleasure. As he said last evening, I had already decided to return home and would have done so without fuss or bother if you had not turned up at the cottage with Joel and Elizabeth and Alexander.”

“I am sad,” Abigail said. “Life is sometimes sad, is it not?”

And for some absurd reason they found that observation funny too and began to laugh again, but somewhat ruefully this time.

* * *

• • •

The really odd thing, Marcel discovered over the following couple of months, was that he did not once feel tempted to dash off to London and his old life or to accept any of the invitations he received to join shooting parties or house parties or, in one instance, an unabashed orgy at the shooting lodge of an acquaintance of his—in the company of only the loveliest, most alluring, most accomplished young ladies, Dorchester. You must come, old chap.

The houseguests all left within two days of the party, including Annemarie and William.

“I must confess to you, Marc,” Annemarie told him privately, “that I am not overfond of Isabelle, and I find Margaret insipid for all she is to be a bride in December. And if I have to make excuses much longer for avoiding morning prayers with Jane, I shall forget my manners and give her a truthful answer. Though she has done splendidly with the twins, I must confess. Bertrand is positively dream material for all the young ladies who will be coming on the market in five or six years’ time. And Estelle is going to be a beauty after all. I did not think so for a long time—she was all eyes and hair and teeth too large for her face. She did a magnificent job with the party, thanks to Jane’s training. She is going to have suitors queued up outside your door as soon as she is let loose upon society. Next spring, will that be?”

“She says she is in no hurry,” Marcel told her. “I will allow her to decide. I am in no hurry to be rid of her.”

“You will allow?” she said with a lift of her eyebrows. “Not Jane?”

“I am going to remain here,” he told her.

“Oh, for how many weeks?” She laughed. “Or days? I am going to start counting.”

André left a few days after everyone else.

“I do not see why you will not come with me, Marc,” he said. “If I had to stay here one more day, I would be climbing trees to alleviate my boredom.”

“But no one is forcing you to stay one more day,” Marcel replied. “Or even half a day.”

“Oh, I say,” his brother said. “You are serious about staying. I will give you another week, Marc, and then expect to see you in London. Have you heard about the new brothel on—”

“No,” Marcel said. “I have not.”

“Well.” André grinned. “You never did have any need for brothels.”

No, he never had. And never would. He doubted that he would ever need another woman, but that was a rather rash thought, brought on, no doubt, by the damnably flat, heavy feeling with which his latest affair had left him. Damn Viola Kingsley—which was grossly unfair of him, but in the privacy of his own mind he damned her anyway.

He spent the two months sorting out the unsorted threads of his life. He gave his aunt and his cousin and her daughter free rein to plan the upcoming wedding—upon one condition. Under no circumstances whatsoever was he to be bothered by any of the details. In addition, he told them, after the wedding, by the beginning of January at the latest, they were to remove to the dower house. Again they might have a free hand about preparing it and the carriage house and stables for their comfort, but the move must be made.

None of them argued.

He had a word with Jane and Charles and suggested that they might wish to resume their own lives at last now that the twins were more or less grown-up and he was living at home with them. Jane looked skeptical.

“But how long will it be, Marcel,” she asked, “before you take yourself off again?”

“I have no such plans,” he told her. “But if and when I do, then Estelle and Bertrand will go with me.”

The tenants who had leased their own home for the past fifteen years had recently moved out. The truth was, Jane confessed, they had been longing to return home and had only remained because they had felt their first duty was to Adeline’s children.