Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

" W elcome to Harbeck!" Allan exclaimed, throwing the door wide. "We're so glad you're both here tonight. Come in. The drinks are ready, and the dinner will be shortly. Come into the sitting room, everything is prepared!"

Cressida couldn't help looking admiringly around as she stepped through the front door of Harbeck Manor. It was her first time here and she hadn't known exactly what to expect, but she was finding herself quite pleasantly surprised.

The manor was big, though not as big as the one she shared with Matthew. That was no surprise, of course. Matthew was one of the wealthiest men in all of London. Still, this estate was very nice, and what was more, there was a warmth to it that her own home with Matthew lacked. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the paintings on the walls and the candles that lined the walls of the room. "Your home is beautiful," she said.

"We're so glad you could be here today," Edwina said. "Into the sitting room, please, we don't want the drinks to get warm."

Cressida and Matthew allowed themselves to be shepherded into the sitting room. Seth and Lavinia were there already, each sipping a drink, and they looked up and smiled when Cressida and Matthew joined them.

"We hoped you would arrive soon," Lavinia said. "We were just talking about you, Matthew."

"About me?" Matthew sank into a chair, took a glass and filled it, and settled back, swirling it ever so slightly. "What were you saying? Good things, I hope?"

"Some good and some bad," Edwina laughed, picking up a half empty glass and sinking into the seat she had no doubt occupied before their arrival. "Cressida, sit down. There's a seat right here. Have a drink with us."

Edwina's words made Cressida realize she had been standing frozen in the doorway. Now she searched herself for the reason why as she crossed the room and settled into the chair Edwina had indicated.

It was the cheerfulness of the room she was in, she decided. She was used to living at Feverton Estate, where it was normally very quiet, almost severe. Here, though, things were different. Even though the room was empty but for the six of them, the place felt like a party.

"What were you saying about me?" Matthew pressed, clearly concerned about the answer.

Lavinia laughed. "Don't be so serious."

"He's always so serious," Edwina pointed out.

"Yes he is," Lavinia agreed. "But he ought to try to have a sense of humor about himself, in my opinion. Anyway, Matthew," she returned to her brother, "we were telling the story of the time Edwina caught a frog and kept it in her room when we were children—do you remember?"

"Of course I remember," Matthew said, his tone rather harsh. "Father thought I was the one bringing wild animals into the house."

"Wild animals," Edwina said dismissively. "It was a harmless little frog, Cressida." She held up her hands to indicate a creature slightly smaller than a teacup.

"It sounds charming," Cressida said. "I do like frogs."

"Who doesn't like them? Well, that is to say, my brother doesn't. When he found out our father thought him guilty of frog catching, it wasn't enough for him to deny the charge, or even to suggest to Father that maybe I was the guilty one. No, Matthew needs to go much farther than that in order to satisfy himself, so he waited until the next time I went down to the pond. When I returned with muddy shoes, he took one of them and brought it to father as evidence that it was me who had been catching frogs."

"Well, you had been," Matthew pointed out archly. "It isn't as though I gave him bad information of some kind."

"Yes, but wouldn't most elder brothers simply tell their father who the guilty one was?" Lavinia asked.

"That's what I would have done," Seth agreed, a smile on his face.

"But not Matthew," Lavinia continued. "Matthew provided Father with proof. That was just the kind of son he was. He understood Father so well, and he always tried to be perfect."

"Perfect?" Cressida found herself surprised by the word, though perhaps she shouldn't have been. Matthew did always strive for perfection. Perhaps it was simply hearing that trait associated with the younger Matthew that was so surprising to her. To think of him as a boy, still trying so hard to do everything right and make sure nothing was ever out of order…it touched her, strangely. It was charming to think of him as a little boy, already beginning to have the same attributes as the man she had come to care about.

"Did your father insist on perfection?" Allan asked. "I've only known him as an old man, and as that he always seemed rather removed from your lives."

"He was much more involved when we were younger," Edwina said. "By the time you and I married, Allan, he had left most of our affairs in Matthew's hands, but during Lavinia's courtship he took more of an active role."

"That's right," Lavinia agreed. "And I would say that he did want things to be perfect, yes. He was concerned with the men we married—who they were, whether they had good reputations—he wouldn't have accepted less than the best." She smiled up at her husband. "Not that he had to."

"Perish the thought." Seth said, grinning back at her.

"But no," Edwina said, "I wouldn't say that he expected perfection from us. I think that came from Matthew, not from Father."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Matthew said. "Father was very demanding on all of us."

"Yes, he was, but you demanded more of yourself," Edwina said. "Don't you remember the way you were around him? You would never allow him to see you if you didn't feel that you were fully presentable, your hair immaculately combed and your shoes perfectly shined. You never spoke in his presence until he asked you to. It was as if you had read a book about how to be the perfect son, and now you were going to try to do everything it had told you. And you never allowed yourself to fail or to show weakness of any kind."

"Like the time you went riding with me," Lavinia said. "The horse threw you, do you remember?"

Cressida felt a stab of alarm, even though the story being told had happened a long time ago. It was as if she could see it happening before her—young Matthew being thrown from his horse—and needed to worry about whether or not he would be hurt.

"Of course I remember it," Matthew said, chuckling at his sister. "It's not the sort of thing a person would forget, being thrown from a horse."

"But it's what happened afterward that really stayed with me," Lavinia said. "You weren't badly hurt, but you had cut your leg on a rock, and you should have asked for help. You didn't do that. Instead, you hid the injury under your pants until we made it back to the house and past Father. You insisted on tending to it yourself rather than getting anyone to help you. You should have sought help, but you refused, and though you didn't tell us the reason why, Edwina and I both knew that it was because you didn't want Father to find out you had fallen."

"Father always said that Matthew was excellent on horseback," Edwina chimed in. "And that was true. But I think he wondered whether Father's opinion would change if he knew about the fall."

"You're making something of nothing," Matthew said. He turned to Cressida. "The injury they're referring to is so minor as to hardly be worth noting at all. I didn't disturb my father with it because there was simply no reason to do so. He didn't need to be bothered with every silly little childhood mishap."

"If one of my children had been thrown from a horse, I would want to know about it," Seth said.

Cressida's mind flashed back suddenly to the evening they had spent at the inn together. The night they had spent in bed together. She and Matthew so rarely spent any time in close, intimate contact, but there had been that one night.

And she recalled something she had noticed in the middle of the night. He'd fallen asleep, but she had been awake, and as he had rolled over, the cuff of his pants had pushed up just a bit and she had seen it.

"You have a scar," she told him.

He looked at her sharply. "What?"

"A scar on your leg. Just above the ankle. Is that the injury Lavinia means?"

"On his right leg?" Lavinia asked. "That's the one, yes."

"Then it was serious," Cressida said. "Fairly serious, anyway, if the cut was deep enough to scar. You should have involved your father. A child shouldn't have tended to something like that on his own." It made her feel sad to think of young Matthew alone in his room, bracing himself stubbornly through the pain as he cleaned up his injury, hiding it from the adults who should have helped him.

The room was silent for a moment as everyone processed what had been said. No one seemed to have anything else to add.

But Cressida felt as if she knew her mysterious husband a little better thanks to the stories that had been shared tonight—and she found herself very interested indeed in the things she had learned.