Page 65 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘Of course.’ She placed her child against her grandmother’s raised knees. She had always been a fierce, unpredictable woman and Celeste did not want her son frightened. But she need not have worried, for the lines of sternness disappeared as her grandmother gazed down on her firstborn great-grandson.
‘He is beautiful.’
‘I think so.’ Celeste could not help but smile.
‘And bonny, too.’ Her grandmother’s old fingers caressed his fat ones, though they stilled as the grasp tightened.
‘I had forgotten that they did that,’ she whispered. ‘And the smell.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘How could I fail to remember that? Loring, you suit your name.’
This was pronounced in the French way with the retractedL. ‘Does he have other names as well?’
Celeste shook her head, though his birth certificate sported Summer as a middle name. She had not been brave enough to place Shayborne along the line in the courthouse at Calais, so Fournier had stood there instead.
‘You are beautiful, little Loring. Where do you sleep, my love?’
‘Next to me.’ He had done so since his birth.
‘Mary Elizabeth’s cot is in the attic. Is that something you might wish to use?’
It was the first time her mother’s name had been spoken between them, falling as a shared sorrow in the gap.
‘It is, Grandmère.’
‘Then I shall send for it to be brought down immediately.’
Loring’s eyes were fixed on his great-grandmama’s, the amber in them obvious in the light from the window.
‘Does he have his father’s eyes?’ The question was quiet.
‘Yes.’
‘Yet he looks like a Faulkner, too, and it has been so long since we have had the gift of a birth here at Langley.’
Sitting on the chair next to the bed, Celeste relaxed. They had come home, Loring and her, and they were safe. When her grandmother’s hand reached out she took it and knew that there was at least a new start in such a gesture. A truce, maybe, and a beginning.
* * *
A visitor turned up four days later. Vivienne Shayborne was small and beautiful. She wore black, the colour suiting her tawny hair, and her eyes were a pale green.
‘I hope you do not mind my coming. Your grandmother had mentioned your presence here and I thought to at least make myself known to you. I seldom have company, you see, so this is a chance to get out of Luxford. My husband died a little over a year ago of consumption and so...’ She left the implication hanging. ‘Perhaps you remember me. From before. I recall you vividly.’
Despite herself Celeste smiled. ‘I found a brooch of yours once, gold and emerald, that was lost in the kitchen gardens.’
‘And you brought it back to me with a bunch of wild flowers. White bryony, if I remember correctly, tied in a blue ribbon. Summerley was a friend of yours, too, was he not?’
Celeste hated the way her heartbeat rose and quickened even as she did not answer.
‘He has been in London for most of the time since his return from the Continent and, believe me, he has had an enormous impact on the hearts of the young women of society. One of my brother’s friends wrote to tell me she swears he will be married soon. Miss Smithson, I think, was the name mentioned, though I have not had time to speak to him directly of it.’
Celeste felt as though the air had left her body. Married. For ever. She made herself listen as Vivienne kept talking.
‘The Continental war was a long and onerous one and Shay was glad of some respite from it. Jeremy wished that he, too, might have been a part of the emancipation of Europe, but he could not go.’
‘I am sorry for the loss of your husband, Lady Shayborne.’ Was this the right title to give her, Celeste wondered, the English system of address so convoluted and difficult?
‘Vivi. Please call me Vivi, and whilst I have had a great number of months now to come to terms with it, I suppose that I haven’t. May I ask why you cut your hair? I remember it used to fall past your waist when you were here last. One of your crowning glories, I remember it said.’
The quick change of subject was disconcerting.
