Love Bade Me Welcome

When I first saw Blythe Wyngate, I could not believe it was to be my home. Norman had not told me it was so huge, nor so very beautiful. The gray granite of its walls shone in the rays of the setting sun like burnished silver. There it nestled, a silver giant, in the soft green palm of the valley’s hand, with gentle hills rising all around. At the cusp of the hill behind stood a windmill, its arms motionless against the sky, as rooks soared above and about. The house was essentially square, the wings surrounding a courtyard, though this could not be seen upon the first glimpse. The facade facing the road boasted an enormous Gothic window with stained glass. The doorway was to its left, in one of the four crenellated towers that anchored it to the landscape, while themselves soaring skywards.

I drew the check string of the carriage. I wanted to stop and gaze at Blythe Wyngate from the vantage point of the hill, before descending into the valley.

“I’m getting out, Mrs. Winton. Will you come with me?” I asked my traveling companion. She had come from Norfolk with me, deeming me, at twenty-two years, too young to travel alone, even if I was a married woman.

“I’ll bide in the carriage,” she said dourly. “You’ll not be long, I trust.”

“Only a moment,” I assured her, and got out.

Glancing down the road, I saw a boy approach. At a distance, he looked to be twelve or thirteen, and wore the fustian shirt of a farm boy. As he drew closer, I judged by his face he was older, but of a small stature.

“Is that Blythe Wyngate ahead?” I asked him. When your husband has described his ancestral home as “a crumbling old heap of a place,” you are in some doubt that it is a veritable castle.

He smiled laconically, his head wagging. I repeated the question. “You’re pretty,” he said. When he finished speaking, his lips remained open, giving his face a witless appearance.

“Thank you. And is that building there Blythe Wyngate?” I asked again.

“Aye, Wyngate,” he answered, with a glance towards it. “I don’t know you,” he added, a crease wrinkling his brow, while his lips still wore their smile. The combination increased his resemblance to an idiot. “Who are you?”

“Mrs. Blythe. That is, Lady Blythe.” Norman had inherited a baronetcy upon the death of his father. He had never called himself Sir Norman, nor had I ever used the title before, but now that I had come to Blythe Wyngate, I would no doubt be called Lady.

“You’re not old,” he said, after some frowning consideration.

“You’d better get back in the carriage, Davinia,” Mrs. Winton suggested.

The poor retarded boy was by no means frightening, but the wind was chilly, and the sun was rapidly setting. Already it cast long shadows on the countryside, painting gray and purple splotches beneath the tall beech and oak trees that dotted the park. The access road to the house wound like a twisted ribbon through the park, giving way to the trees.

“What is your name?” I asked the boy.

“Woodie.”

“I am happy to meet you, Woodie.”

He smiled—a pathetic, witless smile. He had the slightly slanted eyes often seen on idiots, set in a face that too closely resembled a child’s face for a grown man. After having looked at him for a few moments, I had realized he was not a boy at all. There were wrinkles etched on his brow and around his eyes. He was still standing in the road, looking after our carriage, when we resumed our drive towards the house. He didn’t know enough to move out of the dust cloud our carriage kicked up.

“The village idiot,” Mrs. Winton remarked. “What had he to say?”

“He said I was pretty,” I told her.

“Hmph” was her answer to that piece of boasting.

I really only said it to vex her. She had vexed me for three days during the trip from Norfolk. Nothing was to her liking. Inns were cold, filthy, and larcenous; the roads a collection of potholes and infested with highwaymen, who magically did not disturb us once. The carriage was hard-sprung, and I was a fool for thinking I would be welcome at Blythe Wyngate after having married the eldest son without the blessing of the family. And a widow should keep her face veil in place in public, she never forgot to advise me.

It was our local clergyman, Reverend Clark, who had suggested that she should come with me. The fact of her having a sister she had not seen in seventeen years living nearby was also instrumental. She was not likely to have another offer of free transportation. But it was kind of her to come. I must learn to curb my less charitable thoughts.

The truth of the matter is that I was angry with God, and took it out on the world. Why did He give me such a wonderful husband, if it was His plan to rob me of him within the year? Norman Blythe was a wonder in Norfolk. We had never seen anyone like him. He rode into town on a jet-black Arab gelding, with his hat tipped rakishly over his eye, and every girl in town fell madly in love with him. Fathers and brothers cautioned us he was a gambler, a ne’er-do-well, a trifler who would break our hearts and leave. He wasn’t like that at all. He wouldn’t have married me, the dowerless daughter of an Army captain, if he had been a fortune hunter, and that was really what they feared.

He was a gentleman and a scholar, and a man of a good fortune besides. He had had a disagreement with his family—”a great thundering row with Papa” was the way he described it—and left home in a fit of pique. There is no denying Norman had a hot temper. Oh, but how sweet and charming he was when
not
in a temper, and he hardly ever was with me. We only had one real argument, which occurred when his father died six months before. I felt he ought to go home. Blythe Wyngate was his; he should be there to tend it. Norman refused. He was close to irrational about it, in my opinion.

“It will destroy me,” he said simply. “I hate the place, I’d sell it if I could, but as it is entailed, I shall stay away and reap the income. My Uncle Jarvis will be happy to run it, and send us the income quarterly.”

And that’s the way it was. We removed from our small hired house in town to a grander house three blocks higher up the hill. Norman bought the carriage in which Mrs. Winton and I were sitting, a few horses, some new jackets, and several dashing gowns for me. We took a few small trips, but basically our life didn’t change much at all. Norman continued his scholarly research into the Roman occupation of England. I made a fair copy of his notes for him, and we were as merry as grigs.

His fits of temper were more likely to be aimed at editors, publishers, librarians, valets, and housekeepers. He was hot at hand with them, but he treated me like a goddess. He said I was his good luck charm. He cherished me, and made me promise I would never desert him—as if I would! He was all in all to me.

I had been billeted at girls’ seminaries from the time my mother died, when I was ten. I was reared in dormitories and schoolrooms, taking occasional holidays with my father, when he was on leave from the Army. Somehow, Papa didn’t get his leave when other people did. We had our summer vacations in November or March or January, whenever the country’s military strategies made it convenient. But it was not at all convenient to have to stay at school alone in the summers, with only a dry teacher or two for company. When I turned eighteen, my father hired a companion and I lived with her.

My father was in India when I got married; he was still in India.

I received occasional letters from him. Six months after my wedding, I received his congratulations, and some enquiries regarding my groom. I wrote him before I left Norfolk. In another six months, I might receive a note from him at Blythe Wyngate.

“A very prosperous-looking place,” Mrs. Winton decided, after staring hard for several minutes. “I confess I had not thought Mr. Blythe—Sir Norman—to be so well to grass. You are fortunate, Davinia.”

“It is poor consolation for losing my husband,” I answered stiffly. “And I shall be only a poor relative here. Norman had no son. The place is entailed. His half-brother will get it, I expect.”

“Ah yes, his mother was dead, and his father remarried, I recall his saying. Still, they can hardly turn you from the door. There will be some widow’s dowry.”

“There is a dower house, Norman said. I might live there.”

“Unless the Dowager Lady Blythe occupies it,” Mrs. Winton said. “His stepmother is still alive, is she not? We never heard otherwise.”

“Surely she will live with her son, at the big house.”

“Till he marries, she will. What age is the half-brother?”

“I don’t know exactly. Two years younger than Norman, I believe. His father married a year after the wife’s death, and had a son after that. Norman was thirty—would have been,” I amended. He had died the day before his birthday.

“Then the half-brother is twenty-eight. You may be sure he’ll be engaged
,
if he isn’t married already. If
I
were you, Davinia, I would move into the dower house immediately, and stake a claim to it before his mother does so.”

“I wonder where it is,” I said, looking all around. No smaller house was visible, though it was possible one was concealed behind the big house.

As we drew closer, executing the last curve that brought us in front of Blythe Wyngate, the details of its architecture and ornament became clearer. A bay window protruded on either side of the largest front window. Clipped yews made a fence waist high around the concrete apron at the bottom of the front steps. In the middle, forming the entrance, two trees had been allowed to grow taller than the others, becoming evergreen posts, clipped to resemble the newel post of a bannister, with a ball on top. We alit, and went with some little trepidation to the front door.

Mrs. Winton, who considered herself the leader of the expedition, lifted her hand to employ the brass knocker. After two sharp knocks, the door opened, giving me my first glimpse inside Wyngate.

A mile of black and white marble floor gleamed off into the distance. On it stood a black-jacketed butler, who strongly resembled a goat. His face was long and lean, with white wisps of hair floating around his ears. He had shifty eyes.

“Lady Blythe has arrived,” Mrs. Winton said, elbowing him aside and sailing in, with Lady Blythe at her heels, eyes agog.

The butler followed, rather than leading us, to the saloon, where two gentlemen jumped to their feet in greeting. My chief interest was in the younger, whom I judged to be Norman’s half-brother, Homer, as indeed he proved to be, when we got around to introductions. But first I got around to an acute examination of his person.

I would have known him for some kin to my late husband even had I first seen him at some other place than Wyngate. He was tall and tapered, like Norman. The head was of a similar shape, well-formed, the dark hair unwaved, growing in a peak on the forehead. He was not quite so handsome as my husband. Here Norman’s sweet expression had hardened into something approaching grimness. Though the nose was similar, a prominent feature, the eyes were dark blue, not gray, and the lips were thinner. I always told Norman he had lips like a Leonardo angel. But how they could kiss! Nothing angelic in that.

While I observed Homer, he returned the courtesy, his eyes flickering quickly over my face, down the length of my black outfit, over my shoulder to Mrs. Winton, and back again to my face. He did not look happy to see me, but not unhappy either. Curiosity was the most noticeable expression, unless surprise outdid it. Yes, he appeared surprised, but at what I could not guess. I was expected; that I would be wearing black must have been inferred.

“Lady Blythe, we are delighted to welcome you to Blythe Wyngate,” he said, waiting to see whether I curtsied or preferred my hand. I gave him my hand, and soon regretted it. The man didn’t know his own strength. He nearly broke my bones.

“I am delighted to be here. Let me introduce my traveling companion, Mrs. Winton—a friend and neighbor from Norfolk.”

“Mrs. Hillary Winton, of the Norfolk Wintons, from Battleford Hall,” she expanded, laying all her glory in a dish for their admiration. “I could not like to see Davinia come such a distance alone. My sister lives close by, at Bridgewater. I shall be continuing on to her tomorrow, if you can give me rack and manger for a night.”

“I hope you will stay longer than that,” Sir Homer said.

Mrs. Winton certainly heard him, and it gives an idea of her curiosity that she immediately turned her attention to the other gentleman, for in the usual way she will not pass lightly over any invitation to make or extend a visit.

“My uncle, Jarvis Blythe,” the younger man said, seeing where Mrs. Winton looked.

Mr. Jarvis Blythe stepped forward to welcome us. He had little of the Blythe looks. His hair, whatever its original color or style, had dwindled to a white semicircle around the edge of his dome. His nose could never have been prominent, for it was a little mushroom of a thing. His eyes were blue. His body sagged to a well-developed paunch, which a jacket hanging open did not begin to conceal.

“Your mother—is she here, Sir Homer?” Mrs. Winton asked next, with a meaningful glance in my direction.