Page 65 of Unending Joy
“Well? Does that give you a disgust of me?”
“Oh, no, Freddy. Quite the opposite.”
“Then I am going to kiss you again. And then we are going to go and announce our betrothal to the family.”
“If you insist, Freddy.”
A second kiss—surprisingly surer—followed, punctuated by the delighted yowls of Lord Orville as he pounced on their feet. Joy laughed into Freddy’s mouth. He laughed back, and their mirth dissolved into the ripple of the water.
Ten minutes later, they trudged towards the house, dripping like newly landed fish, boots in hand, fingers locked. Freddy thought of Westwood’s raised brow, and his mother’s faintly scandalized gasp, but this proposal suited them to the ground. Joy squeezed his hand, as if divining each thought, and murmured, “Prepare yourself: Faith will prescribe warm baths, Hope will demand broth, and Patience will laugh.”
“Let them fuss. Nothing will dull my happiness,” he proclaimed.
“I never took you for a romantic, Freddy,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.
“See, I did pay attention when I read you all those novels!”
CHAPTER 20
The morning at Heartsfield Grange was one of those that seemed to apologize for the very notion of melancholy. It was everything Joy loved about the country. Skylarks were threading through a canopy of trees and sky, south-westerly breezes floating across the orchard, and the river itself provided a sweet symphony in the distance to accompany the birds. Joy rose early and found the east windows shining in brightness she could almost catch with both eyes if she did not force the effort. A week of Kentish air had made all colours bolder, her aches and bruises fade, and though the right eye remained unreliable at best, the left had grown clever at compensating—much as a fond elder sibling might for its impish twin.
The rest of the party were already outside when Joy joined them on the terrace for breakfast. Faith loaded a plate with food for Joy and handed it to her. Freddy announced that today’s principal entertainments included a fishing picnic on the lower meadow near the river.
That set a ripple of amusement round the table—save for Rotham, who, balancing his toddling son on one knee, was too occupied preventing the child’s chubby fist from upsetting themarmalade. Hope, now several months increased, watched both father and son with indulgent resignation. “Men are born with an instinct for peril. They merely refine it as they age.”
Joy could not disagree with the proclamation.
Patience, her cheeks aglow, murmured that she had news which might shake even Stuart’s equanimity. Joy, prompted by that conspiratorial glimmer, leaned closer. “Another miniature cavalryman on the way?” she guessed.
“Or equestrienne,” Patience confirmed.
Squeals of excitement greeted this pronouncement, and Joy reflected on what it would be like to be a mother. She adored Sylvester’s lopsided grin and Benjamin’s earnest toddle, yet she could not deny a flutter of doubt. What if blindness proved permanent? Would she memorize her children’s faces by touch alone? Would they resent the mother who bumped into chairs and could not read to them? Then she recalled how Sylvester had once thrust a half-eaten apple into her hand, absolutely trusting she could mend its worm hole wound with a kiss. Sight or no sight, love was not measured in flawless vision. “I shall manage,” she told herself firmly. And if I falter, Freddy will scold the furniture for tripping me.” The thought made her smile and steadied her heart.
An hour later the cavalcade set out with Freddy and Joy in the lead, she astride placid Pandora, he on an older cob, Ganymede. This was her first time on a horse since the accident, and still required restraint—not to mention the fact Dr. Harvey’s cautionary lecture about “jostling her head” still rang in her ear. Yet, seated on the mare’s broad back, reins steady, she felt the old thrill of movement: the rhythmic sway, the subtle adjustment of weight, the creak of leather.
“For someone who protested at a plodding old horse,” Freddy teased, “you manage Pandora with remarkable dignity.”
“She is not plodding,” Joy protested. “She is a dowager duchess who moves only when duly petitioned.”
“I stand corrected, your Grace.” He made a short bow from his waist to the horse.
Behind them, the rest followed at varied paces. Some rode and some were to take gigs and carriages. The orchards unfurled on either side of the path, their limbs not yet burdened with heavy fruit. Joy caught the smell of blossoms now beginning their slow alchemy into fruit, and marvelled again at how pleasure could still be had despite concession—slower pace, shaded eyes, Freddy’s discreet watchfulness.
And so what did it matter if she could not do everything exactly as before? There was still so much she could do.
At a dip where the path met the river flat, Montford raised a pointing arm. “Salmon leap from the water!” he shouted in uncharacteristic verve. “Perhaps we shall catch our supper!”
“If you cannot catch one whilst they practically leap onto your hook, then you are not the angler you thought you were,” Westwood taunted his old friend.
The picnic unfolded with cheerful chaos. Rugs spread, baskets unpacked, lemonade poured into thick tumblers that beaded with cold. Sylvester—Hope’s sturdy two-year-old—escaped immediately, barefooted, to chase butterflies. Benjamin—Faith’s one-year-old—toddled in wobbly pursuit, intercepted at intervals by Faith’s quick hand. Freddy assembled three rods with line whilst Joy knelt on a rug, threading bait with fingers nimbler than her impaired vision would have suggested possible.
Westwood had already begun casting with the practised flick of a man who had grown up on angling, and promised a sovereign for the biggest fish.
“And if I bait, hook, and catch with one eye?” Joy asked with a challenge.
“Still a sovereign.”
Freddy handed Joy the second rod and adjusted her grip. “Do not do anything foolish.”
