Page 44 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal

“But I didn’t lose a person.”

He arched his eyebrow but remained silent.

“I didn’t. I only thought I had at first. But Shelbourne was never mine. I never had him, not in any way that matters.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say in response to that, so they walked along in silence for some moments. Suddenly, she wanted to know more of his thoughts on the matter.

She blurted, “Do you feel as I do, that perhaps happiness has passed you by?”

He looked at her, a wrinkle between his brows. “Is that what you think? That your engagement to Shelbourne was your one chance at happiness?”

She shrugged and pulled her wrap tighter around her shoulders, suddenly cold, though it was a mild, sunny day.

“I don’t think life works that way, Candace. I don’t think we only get one chance at happiness in a lifetime.”

“No?”

His words lifted something within her, something that felt a lot like hope.

“Look around. There are new chances for happiness every day. They’re all around us.”

She thought about it as they walked down the lane. On a day like today, with the sun dappling her shoulders and Seamus and Arthur running up and down the berm ahead of them, she could almost believe it. Perhaps it wouldn’t look like what she’d thought, but there was still good in the world, and much of it very close to her.

“Thank you,” she finally said. “I think I’ll try and borrow some of your optimism until mine returns.”

“That’s precisely what good friends are for. Have you given any more consideration to your plans?”

Candace hunched her shoulders and looked out over the sprawling pasture. In the distance, the grass conceded part of its territory to large boulders, and beyond that, trees dominated the horizon. A place of wild, unrefined beauty, it reminded her much of Vera—so much raw potential, just waiting for the right hand to foster it.

“Everyone keeps asking me that, but I don’t yet have an answer.”

“That’s an answer in itself, for now.” He smiled down at her, his dark hair ruffling in the breeze. “You can figure things out as you go. We all know that planning only goes so far.”

Wasn’t that the truth? She’d planned so much—a perfect engagement to an unattainable man, a flawless wedding, a gorgeous house, beautiful progeny, and a happy home life. Candace might have been better suited to writing a novel instead, for that’s all those dreams came to be—fiction.

Perhaps James could understand the pinch of regret, the pain of fragile dreams lost to the fires of reality. She sometimes forgot he’d been married—the marriage had been so brief that only the son currently galloping wild among the hedgerows was proof of it. Surely this wasn’t the life that James had envisioned on the outset—very few people entered into marriage with the hope that their spouse would die early.

Candace had seen a painting of James’s late wife; it hung proudly in the hallway of his London manor alongside the other dearly departeds of his family line. She had been pretty—dark hair, luminous hazel eyes, with a smile that Candace thought she spied on the face of Arthur.

Candace frowned up at him. “Do you miss her? Your late wife, I mean?”

James tilted his head, regarding her carefully.

“Forgive me,” she rushed to say. “Of course you miss her. What a callous question that was. I don’t know why I asked. I apologize.”

“No apology needed.” He looked toward the distant trees. “I only paused because I don’t accurately know how to answer that question. I do miss her, and I don’t, all at the same time. Which probably sounds like a brutish answer.”

Candace shook her head and gave him space to explain.

“Of course I miss her,” he started again, slowly. “She was my very dear friend and I loved her. Ours was a union built upon mutual goals, mutual understanding. We wanted similar things, possessed similar temperments.” He paused to look out at the ruffling grass once more, and his face was grave when he turned it back to Candace. “Despite all that, she and I didn’t have the kind of marriage you’d find in one of those romance novels you pretend you don’t read.”

Candace’s spine straightened. How did he know⁠—?

“I miss her,” he continued, “but she died the night she gave birth to Arthur. An entire chapter of my life has been written without her in it, so it’s hard for me to imagine her here now. I miss her on principle. I miss her companionship. I grieve her loss for me, but more for Arthur. Some say I’ve overcompensated in my rearing of him—that because he was deprived of a mother these early years, I’ve kept him too close.”

“I’ve never heard anyone speak of your parenting without the utmost respect.”

It was true—Devonshire and her brother had discussed the oddity that was James’s parenting at great length one night by the fire. Candace had pretended to be absorbed in her painting that evening, filling in a sketch she’d made that afternoon in the gardens, but her ear and interest had been drawn by the debate over whether Canterbury should have brought his son to a horse auction at the tender age of two and six months.