Page 24 of One Perfect Dance
Regina attended in half-mourning, the whites, mauves, purples and greys a relief after the dull black of the past two months, as the nation grieved for poor Princess Charlotte, who had plunged the country into mourning when she died in childbirth two months earlier.
For the most part, the gathering had been as enjoyable as Regina hoped. Then John Forsythe, Deerhaven’s brother, was caught with a young lady in his bed. Forsythe proposed, of course, and if Regina and her friends were convinced that the minx had crept into the bedroom uninvited, Forsythe was too honorable to denounce her.
Now most of the guests were gone. John and his bride had said their vows in the Stancroft family chapel and were on their wedding journey. Even the bride’s parents had left, taking with them the elderly suitor who had been their preferred applicant for their daughter’s hand. It was a sour note on which to end the house party.
However, the party was about to take on a new lease of life, with a much more cheerful and more innocent set of guests. The Deerhaven coaches had rolled up not half an hour ago, bearing the Deerhaven progeny, come to join their parents for another two weeks at the Stancroft estate. The marquess and his wife had seven daughters and twin sons of not quite a year old.
After enthusiastic greetings, the Deerhavens escorted their offspring up to the nursery floor, accompanied by Lord and Lady Stancroft and Pansy Turner, Lord Stancroft’s stepsister, who lived with them.
Margaret refused the invitation to join them. “I had better make my way home,” she said. “It looks as if it might snow.”
“I’ll see you to your horse,” Regina told her.
By the time Regina had said goodbye to Margaret and ascended to the nursery floor, it had already taken on the state of ordered chaos that surrounded the Deerhavens. The schoolroom group had gathered with the nursery babes to enjoy the attention of the adults—fifteen children in all, for the Deerhaven nine augmented those who lived in the house. The Stancrofts’ had a little son of their own as well as guardianship of the earl’s two sisters and Arial’s three cousins.
The children saw Regina first. “Aunt Ginny,” called one of them, and she was immediately swarmed. Even in the years of her seclusion, she had made an exception once a year for a brief trip to the Deerhavens, and in the last two years, since Gideon’s death, she had spent weeks at a time with her godchildren and their sisters.
Since Lord Stancroft’s two sisters met the Deerhaven schoolroom crowd last year, they had spent so much time together, they had soon taken to calling her Aunt Ginny too, as had Arial’s three little cousins.
Regina shushed the competing voices trying to compress a month of news into a few sentences. “Young ladies! You may each take it in turns to tell me all about what has happened recently. Take a moment to decide who will go first.” She turned to smile at her friends, with the two-year-old Deercroft child on her hip and the four-year-old clinging to her other hand.
“Our apologies for the hellions,” said Deerhaven. He had caught up one of the twins. The little boy was gumming the collar of the dignified and elegantly dressed marquess with every evidence of enjoyment. Blond curls and a pointy chin. Lord Martin, the younger born.
“I am thrilled to see them,” Regina confided. “My goodness, Cordelia, how the boys have grown! I cannot believe it.”
Miles, the Earl of Spenhurst (dark hair and rounded chin), was in his mother’s arms, but squirming to be put down.
“We can walk him, Mama,” offered the oldest daughter. Cordelia lowered the infant to the ground, and he set off gamely around the nursery, lurching wildly from one sturdily planted foot to another, pausing to find his balance, then lurching again. A sister on each side held on to a hand, stopping him from crashing to the floor.
“Miles is determined to be the earliest of our children to walk,” Cordelia confided. “Whereas Martin is more of the view that the world can be easily enjoyed from a sitting position.”
From the cradle in the corner came the sort of mewling noise that presaged an infant about to wake and demand attention. Lord Stancroft swooped on it and lifted his son, the little Viscount Ransome, just five weeks old.
He touched noses with the baby, prompting a giggle, then nuzzled his neck, which set off a whole barrage of them.
Regina swallowed a lump in her throat. She had determined long ago not to deny herself the company of children just because she had not given birth to any.
A chortle from Arial’s little son brought Regina back to the present. She had to swallow a lump in her throat. Geoffrey had been an adorable toddler, but smaller babies always set off an ache in the empty place that longed for motherhood. Of course, she was thrilled for her friends. But since Gideon had died and Geoffrey became a young man, her longing for more children was getting worse, not better.
“Arial, he is a treasure,” she told her friend.
Arial beamed. “They both are.”
Arial was besotted with her husband and he with her. Regina suppressed a sigh.
“Hand me that chubby little giggle bunny, Peter,” Arial commanded, holding out her hands for Harry, as the little viscount was called by his parents. “Ladies, will you excuse me while I feed his little lordship?”
“Of course, Arial. Regina, shall we go downstairs and order tea? Arial can join us down there when Harry is fed. Deerhaven, you and Peter are welcome, too.”
“Stancroft and I are off to his study to discuss important manly things,” Deerhaven told her, his eyes twinkling.
“Like brandy and horses,” added Stancroft, whom all the friends apart from the dignified marquis called Peter.
“I am promised to the young ladies,” Regina reminded Cordelia.
“Twenty minutes, girls,” Cordelia proclaimed. “You may have your Aunt Ginny for twenty minutes, and after that, she is promised to me.”
She blew them a kiss, and she and the men left Regina in the playroom, where she was soon ensconced on the sofa with a girl tucked into each side, one on her knee, and the rest sitting cross-legged on the floor at her feet.
