Benjamin had left his horse at the stables and was heading wearily toward the house when he saw his son trotting along a path at the back of the building. Geoffrey was streaked with dust, which was not unusual. “What have you been up to?”
Geoffrey winced, stood still, and gazed up at him. “I was going to get Tom,” he said.
“Planning some adventure?” Benjamin looked forward to a soft seat and a warm fire. “Mrs. Wandrell is home again,” he added. “I just got word. It seems she marched in, covered in dirt, and declared she wanted a bath before she spoke to anyone.”
The boy simply stared at him. He seemed more tentative than usual.
“I imagine she’ll have quite a story to tell. I can’t wait to hear it.” Benjamin wanted Jean. She would appreciate the news, and perhaps cosset him a little. He’d enjoy that. “I must go and tell Jean.”
“She’s…” Geoffrey began, then stopped.
Benjamin waited, but when his son said nothing more, he moved on. He was nearly to the kitchen door when he heard, “Papa.”
The word brought him to a standstill. Geoffrey had never used it in his hearing before, and the simple sound touched something deep inside. Benjamin turned and looked at the small, grimy figure. Was that distress in his expression?
“I want to be an honorable gentleman,” Geoffrey said. His voice caught on something remarkably like a sob.
“That’s good.” Benjamin moved closer to his son. “Is something wrong?”
“I made a mistake. Does everybody really make mistakes?”
“Yes.” He drew his son over to a garden bench, lifted him onto it, and sat down next to him. “What was your mistake?”
Geoffrey shifted on the seat. He looked apprehensive. Or perhaps despondent? Benjamin didn’t recognize this expression. “Is Miss Saunders going to be my stepmother?” Geoffrey asked.
Benjamin felt a touch of real unease. The boy wasn’t acting like himself. “Yes. But that’s just a word, you know. Real stepmothers are nothing like in the fairy tales.” Most, Benjamin amended to himself. No need to go into that.
“You know about the wicked stepmothers?”
“I do. The old tales seem to be full of them.”
“That’s what she…” Geoffrey began, then stopped.
Was she Jean? Benjamin waited, though he wanted to push. When his son said nothing more, however, he added, “Jean isn’t wicked. She’d kind and gentle. You know that, don’t you?”
Geoffrey nodded.
“She came here to help you, and she ended up…rescuing both of us. She made us into a family.”
The angelic little face creased as if tears were imminent. Geoffrey still looked just like Alice in outline, Benjamin thought. But the specifics were all his own.
“She’s stuck in a storeroom,” Geoffrey blurted out.
Benjamin stiffened on the bench. “What?”
“I can’t get the bar off the door. It’s jammed.”
“You locked her in?” He stood.
“I didn’t. It was the lady.”
“What lady? Never mind. Take me to her at once!” Benjamin remembered the stories Jean had told him about her childhood. She must be terrified.
Geoffrey raced off along the path. Benjamin ran after him, his boots crunching on the gravel. At the far corner of the house, Geoffrey plunged into a clump of bushes. Mystified, Benjamin went in after him. When he caught up, the boy was pushing at a bar set across a low door. “It’s stuck,” he said.
“Geoffrey?” called a muffled voice from beyond the panels.
“Jean?” said Benjamin.
“You’re here! Thank God. The candle burned out.”
Setting his son aside, Benjamin gripped the bottom of the bar and pulled. It resisted, then gave way with a scrape and clatter. He cast it aside and yanked open the door. Jean fell out into his arms. He held her, hands searching for any injury. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said. But her arms were very tight around him. And she was trembling. Benjamin looked down at his son. Geoffrey looked back with Alice’s celestial-blue eyes and his own wary resignation. “What the deuce—” began Benjamin.
Jean reached out with one arm and pulled Geoffrey into their embrace. The boy was trembling, too, Benjamin noted. He set aside his questions to simply hold them both. And Geoffrey let him.
It felt good. Wonderful, really. Like redemption, and peace, and the hopeful future. Benjamin might never have let go, but a tiny iridescent beetle dropped from one of the branches onto Geoffrey’s golden curls. Benjamin brushed it off. Jean pulled back a bit. And the embrace was finished, for now. “Come along inside,” he said. “And tell me how this came about.” He felt Geoffrey flinch.
Jean gazed at him. Something serious, Benjamin gathered. That was the bad news. They would deal with it together. That was the good.
• • •
Geoffrey stood before Mrs. Wandrell in that lady’s own parlor, hands behind his back. He was dressed in his best clothes and scrubbed to shining perfection. “I am very sorry for what I did,” he said.
Benjamin, posted behind his son, approved the tone. Geoffrey sounded contrite, unforced. He looked sincere. Jean would have been proud. They’d agreed she shouldn’t come along, however, because of Mrs. Wandrell’s disappointment over their upcoming marriage.
“It was wrong,” Geoffrey continued. “I want to make a-mends.” He stumbled slightly over the last word, even though it was his choice. “What shall I do?”
Mrs. Wandrell’s eyes flicked up to Benjamin’s, then down again. “Are you asking me to set your punishment?”
Geoffrey nodded. Benjamin reserved judgment. They’d see what she said.
“Huh.” The lady’s frosty demeanor eased slightly. “You told lies. And you shut me up in that dreadful place. For hours!”
Benjamin thought of pointing out that she wouldn’t have been locked up if she hadn’t been trying to wreck his engagement. Maliciously. After trying to frighten a little boy and poison his relationship with his future stepmother. But he waited. Jean would have wanted him to wait. He was surprised that Geoffrey did the same.
Their reward came when Mrs. Wandrell added, “I wasn’t…entirely blameless. Still, what you did was very bad indeed.”
Geoffrey nodded again.
The boy was using his solemn angelic look, Benjamin noted. It was usually effective.
But Mrs. Wandrell seemed to recognize the expression as well. She did have children of her own. “What is your favorite thing to do?” she asked.
“Ride Fergus. My pony.”
She nodded. “All right. No rides for…two weeks then.”
Geoffrey started to frown, but stopped himself.
“No visits to the stables, even. Not so much as an apple or a bit of carrot taken out to Fergus.”
This clearly hit home. The lady knew her punishments, Benjamin thought.
“He’ll forget about me!” said Geoffrey. “Can’t I just go and talk to him?”
“No. As far as Fergus is concerned, it will be as if you were locked away in a dark room.” Mrs. Wandrell glanced up at Benjamin again, then down. He waited.
The boy gazed at her. He appeared to be working things out in his mind. “Fergus’ll miss me,” he said finally.
“I expect he will,” replied Mrs. Wandrell.
“He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No. But he is affected by what you decide to do.”
“Af-fected?”
“Things happen to Fergus because of what you do, the choices you make.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s the truth.” Mrs. Wandrell paused, then added, “Once you have a creature you love dearly, you’re trapped, because it can be taken away from you.”
“You can’t take Fergus!”
“No, I can’t. And I wouldn’t, even if I could.”
Geoffrey looked confused.
“So, no pony for two weeks,” Mrs. Wandrell said. “And of course you must never do anything like that again.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“Good. I expect your father will have more to say to you about that. I’ll leave it to him.” Mrs. Wandrell looked up at Benjamin and raised her eyebrows. “You agree to impose this punishment?”
“Yes.” It didn’t seem unfair. And he would continue their discussions about proper behavior as well.
“Then we’re quits on the matter.”
Benjamin nodded. He didn’t feel like thanking her, though her judgment wasn’t unreasonable. “Let’s go, Geoffrey.”
His son’s small frame relaxed. He scampered toward the door.
“We all have our hostages to fortune, as I think you know quite well now,” said Mrs. Wandrell before Benjamin could follow. “My daughter would have made you a fine wife. And she’d have lived next door to me rather than…wherever she ends up. However far away.”
Benjamin spread his hands. He had nothing to apologize for on that score, but he understood her better now. Jean would say that was a good thing, and he supposed it was.
Father and son rode back to Furness Hall side by side. Geoffrey dawdled a bit, probably because this was his last ride for a while. “Did I do all right?” he asked.
“You did splendidly.”
“It that how an honorable gentleman makes things right?”
“It is. An apology and actions taken to correct the matter. You’ve redeemed your honor.”
“What’s re-deemed?”
“Restored, er, gotten it back.”
“So she had my honor until I said I was sorry? Until I do my punishment?”
“In a way.”
Geoffrey frowned. “I don’t like her having it.”
He hadn’t put this well, Benjamin thought. Should conversations with a five-year-old be so complicated? He wished for Jean, to help him explain. “She didn’t really have it,” he began. “That’s not right. Your honor is always your own. It means the way you treat other people. And keep the promises you make. The only person who can take it away is you.”
“By making mistakes,” said Geoffrey. “But you said everybody makes mistakes.” He sounded apprehensive.
“Most everyone does,” Benjamin agreed. Hadn’t he been mired in a large mistake for most of his son’s life? “But we can make up for them, as you did today. Your honor is lost when you do bad things, and you aren’t sorry or willing to set them right.”
“And you just keep doing them,” Geoffrey said.
“Yes.” Benjamin was glad to see Furness Hall up ahead. This talk was feeling like hard work. He wanted Jean more than ever. Fortunately, Geoffrey seemed satisfied by his explanation.
“I can give Tom carrots to take to Fergus,” the boy said as they rode into the stable yard. “And tell him they came from me.” He glanced at Benjamin, testing out this scheme.
“I think that would be all right.” At some point, they would have to talk about the letter of the law and the spirit, but not today.
Geoffrey seemed inclined to linger in the stable as long as possible, but Benjamin sent him off to change out of his best clothes. Then he went to find Jean in the library and tell her how the visit had gone.
“Geoffrey is an amazing little person,” she said when he’d finished.
“By his own efforts. I did so little these five years.” Regret still tinged Benjamin’s regard for his son. He hoped that one day it would be gone.
“We’re not looking backward. That is agreed.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her closer on the sofa. “It is.”
“You’ve done wonders for Geoffrey lately.”
“As have you.”
She smiled. “I’m almost sorry Miss Warren is coming. But not quite. How will she get along with Tom, do you think?”
“Ah.” Benjamin shrugged. “Apparently Tom is going with my uncle when he leaves. I gather he’s been promised adventures.”
Jean sat straighter. “Oh, Geoffrey will be so unhappy.”
“That’s what I thought. But it seems Tom has been telling him all along that he wouldn’t stay. From the very beginning. So I hope it won’t be too bad. I thought I’d give Geoffrey Molly.”
“A second pony in exchange for a human companion? Like a kitten in exchange for a marriage?”
“Only my first idea.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I’m finding my way.”
“He needs other children to play with.”
“We’ll find him some.” Benjamin waggled his eyebrows. “One way or another.” And there was the flush on her cheeks that never failed to beguile him. “But I want to talk about you. Are you truly all right after that bout in the storeroom?”
“I am.” Jean smiled back at him. “It turns out that rescue comes from the inside, not the outside.”
“Ah.” He gazed at her, his heart full of admiration and love. “I can’t say ‘too bad.’ But I should have liked to be your knight in shining armor.”
“Oh, you’re that all right. My own Galahad. It’s just that the dragon has…changed his spots.”
“Wouldn’t that be a leopard, my adorable biologist?”
Jean nodded. “My metaphor, er, metamorphosed in midsentence.”
Laughing, he kissed her. And kissed her again. After that, there was no further conversation for quite some time.
“When you kiss me, I just melt,” Jean murmured.
“We must get married at once,” Benjamin declared. “If we could go down to the church right now—”
“We must post the banns.”
“Weeks too long!”
“I need some time to get ready for my one and only wedding day,” she told him.
“One and only indeed!”
Benjamin was kissing her again when the library door burst open and Geoffrey scampered in. “They’re hanging my picture. Come and see.” He danced from foot to foot in front of them. “They’re doing it now.” When they had disentangled themselves and stood up, he ran out again.
“I must check the locks on all the bedchamber doors,” said Benjamin as they followed him to the stairs. “Do you suppose he can pick locks?”
“No.” Jean considered and added, “And if he can, you must tell him it is a matter of honor not to do so.”
“Good idea.”
Arm in arm they walked up to the gallery where the ancestral portraits of Furness Hall hung. Tom’s portrait of Geoffrey was being placed next to his mother’s.
No one, looking at the two, would doubt that they were related, Jean thought as she gazed at the two pictures. The red-gold hair, the celestial-blue eyes, the piquant shape of their faces. “Cousin Alice was so very beautiful,” she said quietly. That glowing perfection was a bit intimidating.
“She was, but not quite as beautiful as that,” Benjamin murmured near her ear. “The painter improved on nature. I think he was a little in love with her.”
“Why is my picture lower down?” Geoffrey asked the crew placing his portrait.
“We want an equal distance at top and bottom,” answered Tom, who was overseeing the process. “Looks best that way.”
“That lad is a treasure trove of hidden talents,” said Benjamin.
“I’m glad your uncle has taken him up.”
“Indeed, I’m eager to see what he makes of himself.”
“Where is Lord Macklin?”
Benjamin shook his head. “He received an urgent letter. And then he had to speak to Mrs. Thorpe at once. I have no idea why.”
“Another benevolent mystery?”
“Very well put.”
The picture was hung, adjusted, and approved. Everyone stood back to get the full effect.
Jean felt small fingers curl around hers. She looked down and found Geoffrey holding her hand. “She’ll be up here, and you’ll be downstairs,” he said.
“That’s right,” she managed, her throat tight with emotion.
“Are you going to sleep in my mother’s room?” the boy went on.
“Not if you don’t like it.”
“I don’t mind.” He looked at his father. “I took those things away.”
“Did you?”
Geoffrey nodded. “To my own room.”
“Good.”
“Good,” Geoffrey repeated, satisfied.
With her free hand, Jean reached for Benjamin’s. The three of them stood together, hand in hand, gazing at the past and toward the future.