A brief note accompanied a bundle of what appeared to be old letters:
* * *
My lady,
I have evicted Mama and Bella from Town and forbidden them to set foot on any Summerton property save Lychmont. Between the two of them, they waylaid letters you and I meant to exchange years ago. Bella and the dowager appear to have meddled independently, to disastrous effect, another example of the interference that has plagued us since the day we spoke our vows.
I am at the Hall and finally in possession of the missives you wrote to me all those years ago. They will always number among my dearest treasures.
Godspeed,
All my love,
Vergilius
* * *
He’d never received her letters? Penelope took the forward-facing seat in the traveling coach, and when the beautiful spring scenery should have claimed her attention, she was instead cast back nine years, to the loneliest, most heartbroken months of her life.
She’d lost a child. Vergilius had lost a child and his father within a fortnight. The old viscount’s death had meant Vergilius had been compelled to leave Penelope’s side and thus part from the only real support he’d had.
Penelope had written to Vergilius as a means of comforting them both, sending her love, recounting small moments filled with both grief and hope. Wishing him fortitude and expressing all of her longing for the consolation of his simple presence. I’ll come if you send for me, my lord. Physically, I am recovering from my travail, but my heart yearns for the balm of your embrace.
She’d written to him every day for nearly a month, and all the while, Bella had told her not to pester a man newly coping with a peer’s responsibilities. Don’t cling. Don’t impose. Don’t whine. Nobody respects a woman who’s always sniffling into her handkerchief.
“Damn her,” Penelope muttered. “Damn them both to the foulest privy in hell.” Penelope’s anger was on behalf of herself as a much younger wife and—more significantly—on behalf of her husband. Vergilius had doubtless been told not to bother his frail, sad wife, and by the time Penelope had eventually left Town for the Hall, she had been frail and sad.
She’d been hurt at Gill’s apparent silence, and he had been hurt at what he’d thought was her cold, self-absorbed indifference.
Not merely hurt. Husband and wife had been quietly devastated. A wedge of spite, greed, and selfishness had been driven through their marriage at the worst possible time. She read Gill’s letters over twice, murmuring passages aloud.
Nighttime is the worst, when I miss you unbearably. I refuse the lure of the decanters only because I know you would be disappointed in me for indulging in temporary oblivion. You haven’t that comfort, so I will borrow strength from your example.
When nobody is looking, I hug my horse, Pen. I would feel pathetic, except I know you understand what drives that impulse.
Tommie brought his oldest son along with him to the Hall. I had to leave the room when I realized the boy was on hand. I will apologize to our nephew, but I was ready to throttle Tommie. Tell me you’d have throttled him too. I am dying for word from you, Pen, any word at all.
The letters had grown shorter and shorter and less and less intimate. The last one was dated a month after the baby had died. Penelope hadn’t joined her husband at the Hall for more than a month after that. Bella had had one excuse after another for why a woman recovering from childbirth must remain in Town, and by then, Penelope had long since stopped writing too.
The coach drew into an innyard, one of several stops necessary to change horses.
“The kitchen here is trustworthy, my lady,” the groom told her as he handed her down. “They’d pack you some good tucker for the rest of the journey.”
He was dusty from hat to boots, and Penelope realized that they’d traveled better than half the day without pausing for more than five minutes here and there to change teams. She recognized the inn—The Jolly Farmwife—as one of the usual stopping points along the route from London to the seaside.
“You and John Coachman should take some sustenance,” Penelope said amid the bustle and clatter of coaches coming and going. A whip snapped as a four-in-hand left the yard, and a horse whinnied in the distance. All was commotion, shouting, trunks flying through the air, children goggling at the liveried coachmen, and riding horses swishing their tails in impatience.
Life went on, time flew, but Penelope was no longer in a tearing hurry to complete her journey.
I am dying for word from you Pen. Any word at all. She’d written nearly the same plea to her husband, along with others of the same ilk:
If you cannot see fit to summon me to the Hall, sir, at least have Tommie recall Bella to Lychmont. I am begging you, Vergilius. She said I must donate all the baby’s things to the poor, and I wanted to throttle her with my bare hands.
Our bed has become too large, my darling. As lonely and vast as the sea, and—without you—nearly as cold. I climb beneath the covers and toss and turn in the darkness, because my compass and lodestone, my one sure beacon, is parted from me.
Please write, Vergilius. I am desperate for the sight of even your penmanship.
“How far are we from Summerton Hall?” she asked the groom.
“We could make it from here without another change of teams, ma’am. The distance is a little less than twelve miles. The Hall is lovely this time of year.”
“It is.” Penelope and her husband, ably assisted by a devoted and respected staff, had made sure of that, and yet, they always spent early spring in Town.
Not this year. Penelope had known this year had to be different, but she hadn’t quite sorted out the nature of that difference. Standing in that busy innyard, Vergilius’s letters now among her dearest treasures, she knew that Patchwork Cottage was not the change her heart had longed for.
Vergilius had read her letters. He treasured them, even now. He’d told her that for a reason. I am dying for word from you, Pen, any word at all.
Very well. He would have some words from her. Some more words. “Please inform John Coachman there’s been a change of plans. When you and he have refreshed yourselves, we’ll make for the Hall.”
The groom tugged his cap. “Aye, milady. A fine idea.”
A fine idea—or a completely cork-brained notion. Penelope wasn’t sure which, but she could always travel on to Patchwork Cottage some other day.
As the coach passed through a familiar crossroad and journeyed onto smaller byways, Penelope turned her thoughts to the why of it all. Bella clearly wanted her oldest to become the titleholder, her next-born to be the spare. Mama-in-Law had easily fallen in with that agenda, because if Tommie was raising the heir, he’d have greater influence over and access to the viscountcy’s resources.
Or perhaps the dowager simply cared more for Tommie and Bella than she did for Summerton and his lady. Perhaps Mama-in-Law resented the fall from power that dowager status implied. No matter. Vergilius had banished the interlopers, and Penelope wished them the joy of Lychmont’s chaos and noise.
By late afternoon, the coach was trotting up the lime alley to Summerton Hall’s front door, and some of Penelope’s resolve deserted her. The Hall was so stately, situated beneath enormous maples now luminous with new foliage, its façade stretching across sixteen gleaming windows on each side of an imposing three-story portico.