Lady Griffith's Second Chance

Chapter One

"Perhaps she's too young yet to form a strong attachment," Regan said, plucking idly at a bit of embroidery along the cuff of her dressing gown. "Or it could be that the circle of gentlemen in this part of the country is too small. She's known many of the families around here since she was on leading strings. Sometimes familiarity can prevent a more romantic attachment from occurring."

"She wants someone older," Aunt Agnes said, putting her voice to a suspicion Regan had already harbored for some time. She raised her chin so that the light of the fire sparked on the emeralds decorating her ears and throat. "Someone who is already settled down and has put the wildness of youth behind them."

Regan gazed at the fire as her fingers moved on to toy with the sash on her robe, a slip of flannel fabric that already bore the evidence of her restless hands. "That's what I was afraid of," she said, dropping the sash into her lap. "I guess I should be pleased she's not the sort to be flattered and seduced by a handsome face and empty words, but..."

"It won't be the same as Edmund," Aunt Agnes said, before a log popped and shifted in the fire.

"You can't say that it won't be the same," Regan pointed out. "There's no certainty in matters such as these. And I'm her mother. I'm going to worry. There's nothing I can do to alter that."

They sat in silence for a minute. Regan watched the fire and resisted the urge to continue biting her thumb, while her aunt finally released a sigh preceding her next speech.

"How old was Edmund when you married him? Forty-one?"

"Forty-two." Regan blinked, but she didn't look away from the flames.

A moment passed as, Regan assumed, her aunt totted up a few numbers in her head. "And so he was fifty-three when you lost him?"

"I did not lose him," Regan retorted, and with more force than she'd originally intended. "He wasn't a pocket watch or a bracelet to be misplaced. He died, Aggy. Just say it."

"I am only pointing out," Aunt Agnes continued, each word carefully enunciated. "That he was not a young man still in the prime of his life. And considering what the doctors said—"

"I'm well aware of what the doctors said." She leaned back and shut her eyes, squeezing them until her temples began to hurt. It was always the same, every time she talked about her husband. There was the same ache, the same unwillingness to broach any of the matters surrounding his death. And yet, underlying it all was a peculiar urge to continue talking about it, until there were no more words to say and the grief drained out of her on a waterfall of speech. "They said his heart was weak, that they were surprised he'd lived for as long as he did."

"Anyone can die at any time," Aunt Agnes said, her skirts rustling as she shifted in her chair. "If Katharine chooses to wed an older man..." Regan couldn't see it, but she could imagine her aunt's tilted head and raised shoulder finishing her sentence for her. "You cannot predict the future, and you cannot tell Katharine with whom she may or may not fall in love. Within reason, of course."

Katharine grinned, despite the overall tone of the conversation. She could well remember the protests of a few members of her own family when she, a bright and lovely girl of only eighteen, accepted the suit of a man twenty-four years her senior. Of course, the fact that Edmund had been a recently granted a knighthood on top of a fortune of no less than five thousand pounds a year helped to smooth out any wrinkles of discontent her family may have harboured at the beginning of their courtship.

"And now," Aunt Agnes pressed on, with a pert lift of her greying head. "I wish to speak to you about a certain matter."

"Oh, dear." Regan sat up again, feeling like a naughty child about to be chastised as she did so. "Is it Jack and Maria? Have they secretly eaten all your chocolates again?"