Another Time and Place

Chapter One

Margaret could hear her cousin's footsteps and anxious babbling long before she reached the elegant day room of 49 Grove Place, Knightsbridge. She smoothed the black fabric of her skirts and braced herself for the inevitable onslaught. She didn't have to wait very long.

"Margaret...my poor dear love!" Edith caught her up in a fierce embrace even though she was barely on her feet. "How are you coping? I can't tell you how sorry we are that we couldn't get back any sooner. The Captain is simply devastated."

"It could not be helped, my dear. We managed as well as we could under the circumstances, with your mother's help of course." The last words uttered through gritted teeth.

"Of course, it was a terrible shock to us all. A heart attack at such a tender age." Edith was seated now, dabbing delicately at her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

"Was the funeral well attended?"

"It was a modest affair, but those that mattered most to him were there, your dear selves excepted of course."

"Ships!" tutted Edith, with a visible shudder. "Three weeks to travel from Greece back to England, and may I say it was not a pleasant voyage. I am so glad that Sholto and Cornelius are settled at boarding school and did not have to endure it with us."

Margaret gave a wanly sympathetic smile. Watching the woman before her, she found it hard to believe that she and her cousin had been so close once. Whether it was the company she had been keeping since her marriage ten years previously, or a natural inclination to become more like her mother, Margaret's Aunt Shaw, she had difficulty recalling any of the common interests and ideals they had once shared. Still, she supposed she ought to be grateful for her cousin's presence and solicitude during these early days of her widowhood.

"Have you visited the boys yet?" she enquired, keen to hear news of her young nephews.

"No, Captain Lennox would not hear of it during the week. We shall journey down on Sunday and take them to lunch after church."

"Surely under the circumstances you might be permitted to spend a little longer with them? It seems so...inadequate...after such a long journey."

"It's not considered appropriate to mollycoddle at the school, Margaret dear. Besides, we will have to be back in Portsmouth by Tuesday morning to board the ship back to Corfu."

Edith looked at Margaret, her expression simultaneously pitying and hopeful.

"Of course, it's difficult to imagine how these things work when one doesn't have children of one's own. Still, I'm sure it will be blessing not having to cope with the demands of a young family whilst you...adjust. I know I would worry myself silly if I was left all alone with the boys."

Margaret's cheeks flamed with the effort of containing the retort that was so desperate to escape her lips. Edith still had her mother, as overbearing as she was, and two beautiful young sons who she barely saw, much to Margaret's fury, so she would hardly be alone if it came to pass that Captain Lennox should pre-decease her.

Margaret had longed for children when she had first married, but it was not to be, and a few years into the union she had become grateful that her unhappy state would not be inflicted on any innocent offspring. Now, however, the ache that had filled her heart in those early days swelled once again. The lack of the tiny feet and small voices that should have filled the rooms of her elegant home only serving to emphasise just how alone she now was. Her mother, father, Godfather and husband all dead, no children, a sibling exiled to foreign shores and naturally concerned with the upbringing of his own young family. Of course she and Frederick remained in touch, but he would never be able to return to England, and her late husband's business and personal expectations of her had prevented them travelling to Spain since the early days of their marriage. Even then he had made it clear that the voyage was to be embarked upon very much under sufferance on his part, which had marred the whole event.