“Why did you not simply ask him in the beginning?”
“Because I did not want to create any sort of hurtful gossip around Miss Darrington.”
“Well no, because you love her.” Lady Cynthia smiled mischievously.
“My dear Aunt, I do wish you would not follow that particular line.”
“But it is true, is it not?”
“My driver admitted to me that she had gone no further than the inn on the edge of the village.”
“And so you went there?” Lady Cynthia said, ignoring his refusal to answer her question.
“I went there, only to discover that I had come too late. Miss Darrington had already left.”
“And so you decided to come here to me.”
“I had thought that you might know something of her whereabouts; the two of you seem to have grown rather close.”
“We have grown very close, Hamilton. In truth, I like that young lady very much indeed.”
“Enough to know where it is she now hides herself?”
“She does not hide herself at all. She is rather more a woman of action than one of self-pity.” Lady Cynthia shook her head in exasperation. “And when I said that she did not leave you, I truly meant it. Even now she works to find a solution.”
“A solution to what?”
“She seeks to find a way to open your heart again, I believe.”
“And is my heart so closed?”
“I hardly think you need to ask so ridiculous a question, Hamilton. Your heart has been closed for years, and whatever chinks of light used to make their way out were thrust into darkness the very moment you discovered that Josephine had died.”
“Because I could not go on, Aunt Cynthia. I did not know how to live in a world that she did not also inhabit. I do not know how to live with myself.”
“Because you have assumed that your sister despised you.”
“Yes.”
“And so we have come full circle. But at least Miss Darrington has chosen to step out of the perpetual motion of your repetitive thinking and has gone in search of answers.”
“What do you mean gone in search of answers? This conversation is beginning to lack sense.” Hamilton could not begin to imagine what his aunt meant by it all.
“Your governess, Hamilton, being the only person of sense in your entire household, yourself included, is, as we speak, making her way to Beddgelert.”
“She has gone to Beddgelert? But why?”
“She is making that arduous journey into Wales, my dear boy, to find some proof, if proof exists, that your assertion that your sister despised you is simply incorrect. As far as she sees it, the answer to that question is the only way of reaching you. The answer to that question is the only way of ensuring your future happiness and, by reflection, the happiness of your sister’s children.”
“I cannot understand what she hopes to find. I cannot imagine that there is anything there to discover.”
“Fortunately, Miss Darrington is not so easily dissuaded. If there is the smallest hope of finding something there which would ease your mind and your heart, she intends to find it. Now, what do you intend to do, Hamilton?”
“I must go to her,” he said, surprising himself as much as he had clearly surprised his aunt. “I must pack this day and follow her into Wales.”
“That’s the spirit, Hamilton,” Lady Cynthia said, her eyes suddenly filled with tears of emotion.
“In truth, I do not know what I shall do or say when I get there. I feel I must warn you that, in the end, I might not be able to achieve all that you think I can. I might not be able to allow myself the happiness I denied my sister.”
“But you promise me that you shall try?”
“Yes, Aunt. I promise you that I shall try.”
Chapter 30
“I was so surprised to get her Ladyship’s letter, Miss Darrington, really I was.” Mrs Evans was a tall and lean woman in her middle forties with a kindly face and the air of somebody who had lost a great deal.
“And it is so kind of you to welcome me as you have done. It is wonderful for me to see the place where Eleri and Ffion were born.”
“And you are their governess, as Lady Lyndon tells me.”
“Yes, I am their governess,” Georgette responded vaguely, wondering why it was that Lady Cynthia had chosen to give Mrs Evans the impression that she was still very much employed at Drayton Hall.
But perhaps Lady Cynthia had a little more faith in her nephew and assumed that he would very quickly come to see the error he had made in dismissing her.