Regan stood beside her son's bed, the light from her candle illuminating his sleeping face.
He slept like his father: sprawled across the bed, bare feet sticking out from beneath the edge of the blankets, his head nearly dangling over the side of the mattress while his pillow already lay in a rumpled lump on the floor. She set the candle on the nightstand, returned all of his gangling limbs to their proper positions, and swept his dark hair back from his brow before slipping the pillow back beneath his head.
She bent down to kiss his cheek, and still he didn't stir. Just like Edmund, she thought, before crossing to the other side of the room.
There, Maria slept in her bed, her small figure a contrast to her brother's while in repose. Not only did Maria's dark head still rest in the center of her pillow, but she had tucked her hands beneath her cheek, her pink lips forming a soft pout as she slumbered.
Regan gave Maria's blankets a perfunctory tug before leaning over to kiss her forehead. She was about to stand up and turn away when she paused to sweep an errant curl, a ribbon of hair as black as ink, from her daughter's cheek.
All of her children possessed their father's coloring, the same curling, dark hair and bright blue eyes. When they had been younger, she recalled her disappointment at their lack of her hazel-colored eyes or the auburn cast of her own hair. But then Edmund had gone and left her as a widow, making her forever grateful that in each of the children she had something by which to better remember him.
She fetched the candle from the nightstand and slipped from the room on quiet feet, though she knew both of them slept so soundly that nothing short of cannon fire would be enough to wake them. Further along the hall and several doors down from the nursery, she passed Katharine's bedchamber, but she didn't pause to knock. She had only just heard the faint rumble of a carriage on the drive, her aunt and Katharine no doubt returning from the Earl of Matchmore's dinner. It was late, yes, but not as late as the hours some members of the Kent gentry chose to keep. Regan smiled and wondered who had been the one more eager to return home for the evening, Aunt Agnes or Katharine herself.
Past a few more doors, the light from her candle casting distorted shadows on the dark panelled walls, and she arrived at her own suite of rooms. Inside her bedroom, the fire burned brightly, not yet been for the evening. She was about to shrug out of her robe and kick her slippers under the edge of the bed when a soft knock sounded on her door.
"Come in," she said, without bothering to look over her shoulder. She recognized the knock, and so was unsurprised when Aunt Agnes walked into the room, a rustling of silk and satin marking her entrance before the older woman had even drawn breath to speak.
"I thought you might still be up," Aunt Agnes said. She wore her ball gown, a green silk creation that stolidly adhered to the previous decade's fashions, though Regan knew the gown had been made for her aunt only a few months before. "I sent Katharine directly to her room. Lord knows, she'll most likely be awake for another hour yet before the excitement of the evening fades away."
Regan glanced at her bed with longing, but padded towards one of the armchairs near the fire instead. "It was a good evening, I take it?"
"For Katharine, I'm sure it was." Aunt Agnes heaved a dramatic sigh and insinuated herself into the armchair opposite Regan's. "She is quite the success, you know. The men of the county flock around her, and the more she turns her nose up at them, the more enamored they become." She shook her head, though her expression was light. "If her behavior was mere artifice, then I would be the first to call her out on it. But she truly doesn't seem to care for any of these gentlemen harboring a passion for her."
"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?"
"No." Her aunt's mouth narrowed into a humorless line. "Though you do owe me another box of truffles."
"Of course, Aggy." Regan nodded.
Aunt Agnes cleared her throat. "This concerns you, my dear. I would like for you and Katharine to attend Lady Polmerol's house party next month."
But Regan had already begun to shake her head. "No, no. A house party? It would be too long away from the children, and I'm sure you could—"
"I am not going." The older woman cut through Regan's remonstrances with the precision of a knife. "I am not Katharine's mother. If you were sick, if you were an invalid, then perhaps I would feel more inclined to excuse you from your duties. But she will soon be married, if not this year, then no doubt next year. And she needs her mother to guide her. Not an aunt, not a cousin or a chaperone or someone else entirely. She needs you, and I expect you to give up this middling half-life you've submerged yourself in and be there for her as she searches for a husband." She sniffed, and again tilted her chin in a manner best suited to putting the cap on a particularly tiresome conversation.
Regan spread out her hands in her lap. She didn't want to look up at her aunt's face, to endure the scrutiny in those keen grey eyes. But she did, as she had done since her aunt's arrival at Bingaman Park at the beginning of Katharine's entrance into society, already two years before. "I will... I will think about it," was all she could bring herself to say, without her voice threatening to break or her chin to tremble.
"Good." Aunt Agnes rose easily from her seat, despite her age and her oft-touted physical complaints, and straightened her shoulders. "And while you're thinking, perhaps you can decide on a dressmaker. It's time to put aside the dull greys and lavenders, and everything you have from before Edmund's death is frightfully sortir de style."
Regan held back a snort at that. Of all the people to chide her for wearing clothes that were out of fashion...
"If you're going to begin escorting Katharine about the countryside," Agnes went on, "then you'll need to be seen in some color."
Regan remained in her seat near the fire until long after her aunt had left the room. Sitting in the massive chair, her feet tucked up beneath the edge of her nightdress, she watched the flames burn lower and lower as Agnes's words played on a continuous loop inside her head.
Had she really been living a half-life for the last seven years? She thought back to the grief she'd experienced after Edmund's sudden death, a terrible sadness that had been swiftly joined by the needs of her three young children. Jack and Maria had been mere babes at the time, and so she'd concentrated all of her efforts on making sure they would have some knowledge of him—not as a viscount and peer of the realm, but as their father. As the man who loved them and yet would never see them grow.
And now Katharine was already a young woman, searching for a husband of her own. How had that happened? Where had the little girl gone, the one with the dirt-smudged pinafore and the leaves and twigs tangled in her dark curls?
Perhaps Aunt Agnes was right. She'd spent so much time living in the past, ensuring her children honored and respected the memory of their father, that she'd forgotten about their future.
Soon Katharine would be married, and Jack would be off to school, and Maria would start thinking about gowns and dances rather than dolls and mud pies...
Regan drew her robe around herself and laid her head back against the chair. Edmund would not want her to live like this, to pull herself into a smaller and smaller circle until the only people she saw were her family and the servants. If she wanted her children to go out and to live their lives, then she would have to lead by example.
Oh, but it was a terrifying thought! To attend parties again? To engage in banal conversation and watch myriad couples tramp on each other's feet on the dance floor? To risk fainting in an overheated ballroom while women gossiped and men leered and...
Well. She would attend all manner of balls and musical entertainments and routs, and all for Katharine's sake. But once her oldest child had made a match and was well settled in her new life, Regan would slip back into her previous routine, of running Bingaman Park and chasing after Jack and Maria. At least, that was until it was their turn to both grow up and so suddenly slip away from her.
***
"Oh, Mamma! I wish you had been there!"
Regan patted Katharine's hand and kept her eyes pinned to the trees that bent low over the pond. Beneath their branches, Jack and Maria batted a shuttlecock between them, their arms swinging with the force of an all-out war.
"But I was not," Regan said, with a benevolent smile towards her daughter. "And so you must tell me all about it."
She tilted her face upwards, allowing the sunlight to warm her cheeks and forehead. She squinted at the brightness of the day, while clouds like dandelion fluff floated from one horizon to the other, casting shadows on the lawn. She'd abandoned her bonnet some time before, and the heat from the sun prickled at the part in her hair, no doubt already turning her exposed skin to a warm pinkish hue. But it was summer, and the rain had finally ceased, and the shrieks and laughter of her younger children filled the air around her.
They followed the same routine every morning after a ball, or assembly, or even a small dinner party accompanied by a game or three of cards. After breakfast and the children's lessons, Katharine would regale her mother with the previous evening's entertainments. No detail was spared as the nearly unbearable press of bodies was recounted along with the state of Katharine's hem, the poor thing stepped on and torn no less than four times during a single dance.
Regan looked down at her own hem, the edges bearing three inches of mud and moisture on the darkened fabric. Three days of rain after a particularly wet spring had turned the ground into a sodden, squelching mess. She frowned at the stains, though half her gowns bore the evidence of too much time spent out of doors as she traipsed around the grounds with her children.
Ahead of her, near a copse of apple trees, Jack and Maria raced around the lawn, batting a shuttlecock between the two of them. Their arms swung with the force of an all-out war, and Regan wondered if there wouldn't be tears shed before the game's end.
"Time for a truce!" she called out, waving her hand to garner her children's attention. "Mrs. Dale has provided us with lemonade, and there are fresh strawberries and cream for after you finish your sandwiches."
Maria dropped her racket on the ground, the game apparently rendered unimportant in the face of such delicious treats. Jack continued to bounce the shuttlecock up and down with his own racket, finally giving it one swift hit that sent it sailing into the nearest tree before it lodged itself in the crook of a high branch.
"Oh, blast!" he said, and stamped his foot.
"John Sebastian!" Regan paused before setting down the basket she'd brought out from the kitchen. "I will not have you using such language, especially where your sister can hear," she added, and bit down at the corner of her mouth before it could twitch upwards and destroy her attempt at scolding.
"Sorry, mama." Jack scuffed his heels through the grass, gave one last glance to the lost shuttlecock, and meandered over to the blanket Katharine had spread out on the warmest, driest part of the lawn she could find.
They settled into their light meal, the children tearing through the stack of sandwiches as if they hadn't already tucked into two bowls of porridge - each! - that morning along with a vast quantity of potatoes and eggs. Katharine chided Jack when he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, who stuck out his tongue at his elder sister. A look from Regan brought a flood of color to his cheeks, and he muttered an apology before picked up his napkin and dutifully brushed at the crumbs still clinging to his chin.
"Now," Regan began once the younger children had abandoned the blanket, Jack scrabbling up and over the branches of an apple tree in search of his missing shuttlecock. "Tell me about this Lord Dunstable of whom Aunt Agnes spoke about over breakfast." She tried to give her voice a tone of carelessness, even allowing her gaze to slip away and follow the progress of a pair of squirrels attempting to bound out of the tree Jack had just invaded. "She said he paid you a remarkable amount of attention last night."
"Oh, him!" Katharine rolled her eyes and gave her head a shake, her dark curls bouncing around her ears. "Too young. He's like a puppy, all gamboling about and panting around the skirts of the young women. And he still has spots," she stressed, in a scandalized tone. "When I marry, it will be to a man, and not some half-grown boy only a year out of the schoolroom."
Regan fought the urge to roll her own eyes. Four proposals of marriage Katharine had turned down in the last two years, and all for similar reasons. Either the man was too young, too immature, too obsessed with horses and curricles, or too interested in heading to London and obtaining membership at White's or Boodle's or whichever gentlemen's club was the height of fashion at the moment.
"You will find someone," Regan assured her daughter. "A young man will come along and sweep you off your feet before you even realize it. And he will be everything you want him to be, just as you will be everything he wants you to be."
Katharine looked at her mother, her blue eyes gleaming darkly beneath the brim of her bonnet. "I doubt it will happen like that," she said with a cynicism belying her years. "I don't believe in fairy tales anymore, Mamma."
"I know, dear," Regan said, and gave her daughter's hand a pat. "Neither do I."
Their meal finished, Regan and Katharine gathered up the leftover foodstuffs and shook out the blanket that had protected them from the worst of the dampness. As they began their return journey to the house - Jack brandishing a scraped knee from his adventure rescuing his shuttlecock - Maria paused in her skipping and pointed in the direction of the small rise beyond the pond.
"Who's that, mama? Who's that?"
Her hands full and her bonnet stuffed unceremoniously beneath her arm, Regan squinted in the direction her daughter had pointed. Two men on horseback trotted along the rutted dirt road that wound along the edge of the deer park and towards the front of the house. But it appeared that the two riders had spotted Regan and her children, and began to cut a line across the lawn and towards them instead.
"Oh, it's Mr. Talbot," Jack announced, his free hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. "I don't know who the other gentleman is, though it's a fine horse he's riding!"
Katharine uttered a graceless word or two under her breath. Regan feared the poor young man would be the fifth man to offer marriage to her daughter, and the fifth to be rejected. And so she offered a perfunctory smile and nod to Mr. Talbot, who slowed his horse to a halt before alighting from the animal in one graceful movement.
"Lady Griffith! Miss Griffith!" He removed his hat and practiced a smooth bow. "What a pleasure, I do say! I had not expected to meet such delightful company at such an early hour! Here, Thomas!"
The other young man descended from his own saddle and stepped forward. Regan caught sight of dark hair and light eyes beneath the brim of his hat, though she couldn't tell if they were a pale blue or a very light grey. He stood taller than she'd taken him to be while still seated on his horse, and as he walked towards his friend, Regan found herself tipping her chin up in order to see him better.
"Allow me to introduce Mr. Cranmer," Mr. Talbot said, gesturing towards his dark-haired friend.
Mr. Cranmer bowed. The ladies both curtsied. When Regan looked up again, she found Mr. Cranmer staring at her from under dark eyelashes, though before she could think anything of it, his gaze drifted towards the house and the gardens that flanked it.
"It is a beautiful prospect you have here,' Mr. Cranmer said once the litany of introductions had been made. "Mr. Talbot promised me a short ride this morning, but I had no idea how long it would take to reach the house once we came upon the border of your property."
"We keep the stream well-stocked with trout," Regan said, glancing from one gentleman to the other as she spoke. "My husband was quite the angler, and my son, it seems, is determined to follow in his footsteps. Both of you would be welcome to try your luck in our waters. That is, if either of you are at all interested in fishing."
"Well, then!" Mr. Talbot's already gregarious expression took on a brighter glow. "Thank you very much, my lady! What do you think, Thomas?" He clapped his hands together and turned towards his companion. "Shall we take Lady Griffith up on her offer, come out here in the morning and see how many trout we can hook?"
"I could come with you!" Jack chimed in, rising up to the balls of his feet and pushing out his narrow chest. "I know all the best spots, the pools where they like to gather and keep out of the sun."
"And I know where to find the best worms!" Maria added, but Regan held up a hand to calm them before her younger children could toss the last vestiges of their manners aside.
"Or perhaps we'll begin with some tea," she said, and looked over at Katharine long enough to see her smile tighten at the edges. Her eldest daughter, apparently, was not as enthused about entertaining as Jack and Maria. "Gully can look after your horses for you, and I'm sure our cook has a few treats stashed away if you care to join us inside?"
"Or in the rose garden, perhaps?" Katharine spoke up for the first time, as if she realized that her prolonged silence might be interpreted as rudeness, though Regan knew her daughter had never given more care than was necessary for the rules of etiquette. If Katharine didn't like someone, it was rarely kept secret for long.
"An excellent suggestion," Regan agreed. "Shall we meet you there once I've had an opportunity to go inside and tell Mrs. Dale of our plans?"
"Of course!" Mr. Talbot and Mr. Cranmer offered their temporary farewells, and set off in the direction of the stables with their horses.
"Take your things inside," Regan instructed Jack and Maria. "And for goodness sake, wipe your feet before you track half the lawn across the floors. Your aunt will have your heads for porridge if she finds a single speck of mud beyond the kitchen threshold." As the younger children bounded away, she adjusted her grip on the basket and fell into step beside Katharine. "Would you rather I have not invited them to stay for a bit?"
Katharine sighed, her nose wrinkling as the furrow in her brow deepened. "I fear Mr. Talbot is going to make an offer of marriage."
"What? In the rose garden? In front of me and Mr. Cranmer?"
"No, of course not. But he seems to accept every invitation to every party in the county, and no doubt there will be ample opportunity for him to make any future situation awkward and uncomfortable by asking me to be his wife."
Regan cocked her head to one side as she regarded her daughter. "And you will have no choice but to reject his offer?"
"Oh, mama! Did you see him?" Katharine clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth, shaking her head like a nurse or governess a dozen years older than she was. "As eager as an untrained pup! And the lining of his coat? Violet satin!"
"Goodness, you're right!" Regan said, holding back a laugh that threatened to escape from the back of her throat. "How silly of me to think that such a man would make a suitable husband. Violet, indeed!"
Katharine stopped in her tracks, the breeze pushing her curls about her neck and catching them on the brim of her bonnet. "You're teasing me."
"Of course I am." Regan pushed one of the dark curls from her daughter's cheek and adjusted a loop of the ribbon tied beneath her ear. "What kind of mother would I be if I did not?"
Katharine's mouth tightened into a narrow line. "Do you think I'm too critical, mama? Have I created such a perfect image of a potential husband in my imaginings that now I'll never meet someone who will be good enough?"
Regan finished fiddling with her daughter's bow and began plucking at the lace that edged her sleeve. When had Katharine grown so tall? Wasn't it only the summer before last that Regan could still pick her up and spin her around until they were both dizzy? "You must follow your heart in this," she said, her voice thick with emotion she hadn't realized was there until the words found life. "And you must never, ever choose someone who is merely 'good enough.'"
Katharine smiled then, her shoulders drooping slightly as she exhaled. Regan grit her back teeth until the burn of tears faded from the corners of her eyes.
"Now," Regan said, her tone returned to normal. She switched the basket from one hand to the other, clapped her crumpled bonnet on her hair, and indicated with a nod of her head that they should resume their progress towards the house. "We've guests to entertain and your brother and sister to wrangle before they trample through the roses like a pair of unbroken colts. Shall we?"
"Yes, mama," Katharine said, and slipped her arm through her mother's.
***********************************
So!
I began posting this story under the title "One Shade More" last year, then became overwhelmed with new baby, had some health issues crop up, and promptly left this sit and gather dust.
The story is now complete, and I will be posting it on a M-W-F schedule over the next few weeks until it is all here for you to read!
Now, this is not the final edit of the story, so there may be some bugs still clinging around, but it's not a first draft or anything as rough as that.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Quenby