They all laughed again.

“I do wish they had stayed here a little longer,” she added.

“They are on their way to Gloucestershire,” the countess explained, “to visit Anne’s family.”

“Indeed?” The duchess looked interested. “Joshua told us she was estranged from them. I do think it is sad to be estranged from one’s family. I know from experience, though it was in-laws in my case-in-laws from my first marriage.”

“We have guessed,” Lauren said, “that it is Sydnam who has persuaded Anne to go home.”

“Ah.” The duchess sighed and sat back in her chair, her hands warm again, “it really is turning into a good marriage, is it not? But they did not have much of a wedding for all that. When I broached the matter with Wulfric last evening, he insisted that Mr. Butler would probably hate any fuss, but he did finally relent and agree to allow me to organize a grand wedding reception for them. I came to consult you about it. But I am too late-they are gone. How very provoking!”

“Oh,” Lauren said, “how wonderful that would have been. I wish I had thought of it myself.”

The duchess sighed. “Wulfric will look smug when I go home and tell him they are gone,” she said.

“It was a very good thought, Christine,” the countess told her.

“Well,” she said, looking from one to the other of them, “there can be no wedding reception at Lindsey Hall within the next few days after all. But I am not discouraged. How many people could be assembled there at such short notice, after all? Perhaps it was not the best of plans.”

“You have another?” Lauren asked.

The duchess chuckled. “I always have another plan,” she said. “Shall we put our heads together?”

Mr. Jewell lived with his wife in a modest square manor just beyond the village of Wyckel in Gloucestershire, a picturesque part of the country.

It occurred to Sydnam as the carriage drove through the village and then turned between two stone gateposts and covered the short distance across a paved courtyard to the front door that they must be no more than twenty-five or thirty miles from Bath.

Anne had been that close to her family for several years.

She was looking very smart in a russet brown pelisse and matching bonnet with burnt-orange ribbons. She was also looking rather pale. Her gloved hand lay in his-today he was sitting beside her while David rode with his back to the horses. At the moment his nose was pressed against the glass and excitement was fairly bursting out of him.

Sydnam smiled at Anne and lifted her hand to his lips. She smiled back, but he could see that even her lips were pale.

“I am glad I wrote to say I was coming,” she said.

“At least,” he said, “the gate was open.”

He wondered how she would feel-and how David would feel-if they were refused admittance. But he still believed this was the right thing to do. Anne had faced most of the darkness in her life on the little island at Alvesley four days ago, and it seemed that the sunshine had got inside her since then. They had made love each night, and it had been clear to him that doing so had given her as much pleasure as it had given him.

But today, of course, the sun was not shining-either beyond the confines of the carriage or through her.

“This is where my grandmama and grandpapa live?” David asked rather redundantly.

“It is indeed,” Anne said as the coachman opened the door and set down the steps. “This is where I grew up.”

Her voice was low and pleasant. Her face looked like parchment.

The house door opened before anyone had knocked on it, and a servant, presumably the housekeeper, stepped outside and bobbed a small curtsy to Sydnam, who had already descended to the courtyard, his good side to her.

“Good day, sir,” she said. “Ma’am.”

She looked up at Anne, who was descending, one hand on his.

But even as Sydnam opened his mouth to reply, the servant stepped to one side and a lady and gentleman of middle years appeared in the doorway and came through it. Two other, younger, couples followed them out, and behind them a group of children clustered in the doorway and peered curiously out.

Ah, Sydnam thought, they had gathered in droves to greet the lost sheep, had they? Perhaps on the assumption that there was safety in numbers?

Anne’s hand tightened in his.

“Anne,” the older lady said, stepping ahead of the gentleman Sydnam assumed was Mr. Jewell. She was plump and pleasant-looking, neatly dressed and with a lacy cap covering her graying hair. “Oh, Anne, it is you!”

She took a couple more steps forward, both hands stretched out before her.

Anne did not move. She kept one of her hands in Sydnam’s and reached up to David with the other. He came scrambling down the steps and stood beside her, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Yes, it is I,” Anne said, her voice cool-and her mother stopped in her tracks and dropped her arms to her sides.

“You have come home,” Mrs. Jewell said. “And here we all are to greet you.”

Anne’s eyes went beyond her mother to survey her father and the two younger couples. She looked toward the doorway and the children fairly bursting out through it.

“We have called here on our way home,” she said with slight emphasis on the last words. “I have brought David to meet you. My son. And Sydnam Butler, my husband.”

Mrs. Jewell’s eyes had been fairly devouring David, but she looked politely at Sydnam, who had turned fully to face them all. She recoiled quite noticeably. There was a sort of collective stiffening of manner among the others too. Some of the children disappeared inside the house. A few bolder ones openly gawked.

Just a few months ago Sydnam might have been upset-especially about the children. He had spent years basically hidden away in a place where he was known and accepted and very few strangers ever came. But it did not matter to him any longer. Anne had accepted him as he was. More important, perhaps, he had finally accepted himself for what he was, with all his limitations and all the exhilarating challenges they offered him.

Besides, this moment was not about him. It was all about Anne.

“Mr. Butler.” Mrs. Jewell curtsied as he bowed and turned to introduce the others-Mr. Jewell; their son, Mr. Matthew Jewell, and Susan, his wife; Sarah Arnold, their daughter, and Mr. Henry Arnold, her husband.

Sydnam’s eye alighted on that last gentleman and saw a man of medium height and pleasant looks and balding fair hair-neither a hero nor a villain as far as looks went. He exchanged a brief but measured look with the man and had the satisfaction of seeing that Arnold knew that he knew.

There were bows and curtsies and murmured greetings-and a great deal of awkwardness as Anne inclined her head to them all as if they were strangers.

But Mrs. Jewell had returned her attention to David.

“David.” She ate him up with her eyes again, though she did not move from where she stood.

“Are you my grandmama?” David asked, his voice and eyes still eager. He seemed unaware of the awkward, tense atmosphere that was affecting all the adults. His eyes moved to Mr. Jewell, a tall, lean gentleman with gray hair and stern demeanor. “Are you my grandpapa?”

Mr. Jewell clasped his hands behind him.

“I am,” he said.

“My real grandmama and grandpapa,” David said, stepping away from Anne and looking from one to the other of them. “I have new grandparents at Alvesley, and I like them very well indeed. But they are my stepfather’s mama and papa and so they are really my step-grandmama and my step-grandpapa. But you are real.”

“David.” Mrs. Jewell had set one hand over her mouth and seemed to be half laughing and half crying. “Oh, yes, we are real. Indeed we are. And these are your uncles and aunts, and those children, who were told that on no condition were they to step outside, are your cousins. Come inside and meet them. And you must be hungry.”

“Cousins?” David looked eagerly to the doorway.

Mrs. Jewell reached out her hand to him and he took it.

“What a big boy you are already,” she said. “And nine years old.”

“Going on ten,” David said.

Anne stood where she was as if she were made of marble. Her hand was stiff and motionless in Sydnam’s.

“Well, Anne, Butler,” Mr. Jewell said abruptly, “you must come inside and warm yourselves by the fire.”

“It is teatime, Anne,” her brother, Matthew, said. “We have been waiting, hoping you would arrive soon.”

“I am very pleased to meet you at last, Anne,” his wife said.

“And your husband.”

“Anne,” her sister, Sarah, said quietly before taking her husband’s arm to return to the house, but it was doubtful Anne even heard, as she was not looking their way.

It was not a joyful homecoming, Sydnam thought as he led Anne in the direction of the open door. But neither was it an unwelcoming one. All her family members had taken on the challenge of meeting her again too-presumably they did not all live here. They had come, however unwillingly, because Anne was expected.

Surely there was hope in that fact.

He held Anne’s hand in a firm grip.

The house was disorientingly familiar-it was where Anne had grown up and been happy. And yet she sat with rigidly straight back on her chair in the front parlor, like a stranger.

Her father looked older. His hair was now entirely gray, and the lines running from his nose to the outer corners of his mouth were more pronounced and made him look more austere than ever.

He looked achingly familiar, yet he was a stranger.

Her mother had put on weight. Her hair had grayed too. She looked anxious and bright-eyed. She was the woman who had been a rock of security through Anne’s growing years. Now she was a stranger.