dared to dream about before fifteen months ago. She had relatives and inlaws of whom she was dearly fond and with whom she corresponded regularly, but she was not answerable to any of them. She had neighbors who were amiable and fussed over her in quiet, sympathetic ways while she was still in mourning, forever bringing her flowers and baked goods and produce from their gardens. Mrs. Piper, Jeremy’s mother, was particularly attentive in these ways, almost to the point of being intrusive, since she always brought her offerings right inside the house without waiting to be invited and looked around with avid curiosity as she talked.
The neighbors now included Lydia in the social life of the community, both simple gatherings, such as this one tonight, and more elaborate events, like dinners at Sir Maynard Hill’s and the assemblies above the village inn, where there was music and dancing. But from her neighbors—most of them, anyway—as much as she valued their kindness, Lydia could withdraw to the privacy of her own home whenever she wished.
She had even acquired a few real friends over the last year or so, women such as Lady Hill and Hannah Corning and Denise Franks, with whom she could visit and sit and talk and laugh. Women she could welcome into her own cottage. She had never been able to enjoy that luxury at the vicarage, where people were invited only on formal church business, organized and conducted by Isaiah and catered to by Mrs. Elsinore. Lydia had never had women friends until recently, in fact. She liked it.
There was only one thing she needed now to make her life perfect. Oh, it was not a man. Well, not exactly, anyway. She had had a man. Indeed, she had had nothing but men all her life, it seemed, ever since she was eight, when her mother died a few weeks after giving birth to Anthony, the youngest of her three brothers. She had no sisters and no grandmothers. Her only aunt, her father’s sister, was estranged from him, since she had insisted upon marrying a man he had considered less than respectable. Then, at the age of twenty, Lydia had married Isaiah, who had one brother but no sisters and no living mother and not even a sister-in-law until three years ago, when Lydia was twenty-five. She had been married to Isaiah for a little over six years before his death.
There had been nothing but men in her life since she was eight—twenty years ago—until recently. She had decided during the past fifteen months that she had had enough of them, though none of them had ever been openly cruel to her. But there would be no more men—not, at least, men who would own her and have charge of her life and her very mind and person. Freedom was a wonderful thing, she had discovered. It was far too precious to give up. Ever.
Mrs. Bailey, the vicar’s wife, was arranging her considerable bulk on the pianoforte bench, having been invited to play by Tom Corning himself. She was by far the most accomplished pianist in the community. Unfortunately, the instrument was slightly out of tune, as it had been for as long as Lydia had been at Fairfield, and the key of high C stuck whenever it was depressed with any degree of pressure and had to be manually restored to its position before the music could continue. Everyone listened indulgently anyway, while Mrs. Bailey played and Major Westcott stood at her shoulder to turn the pages of the music and lend his assistance with the sticky key.
“Tom,” he called across the room when the first piece came to an end and the smattering of applause had died down. “If you do not hire someone within the next week to overhaul this instrument and repair that key, I swear I will undertake the task myself and you will be sorry.”
“He will probably saw off the key altogether, Tom, and leave a gaping hole in its place for Mrs. Bailey and others to break a finger through,” Dr. Powis warned. “I would not chance it if I were you, though the broken finger would be business for me. Get the dratted piano tuner here.”
“You have been threatening to have the thing tuned for at least the last four years, since I came home,” Major Westcott said. “Hannah must have the patience of Job to put up with it.”