He was a stiff, proud, humorless, morose man. As handsome as sin, it was true, with his blond hair and regular features and trim, elegant figure, but with no character or personality or human warmth with which to attract even the mildest affection. He had been a dreadful disappointment to Elizabeth. Nevertheless, he was her husband, and it hurt to hear her mother belittle him.

When the nurse went downstairs to fetch more mending, Elizabeth sat down. She set the baby on her lap, his head nestled between her knees.

She held him by the ankles and lifted his legs one at a time to kiss the soft soles of his feet.

“And he is your papa, my precious,” she said aloud. “He is coming home for Christmas.”

Jeremy blew a bubble.

Perhaps, she thought, if he stayed for a week or two he could leave her with child again. It was not an entirely unwelcome prospect. Jeremy gave meaning to her lonely life. Another child could only enliven her existence even more. It was only the process she dreaded. He had not treated her roughly during the two weeks following their wedding-not by any means. He had done only what her mother had warned her he would do.

It had not even been painful, except a little the first time. But she had been chilled and humiliated by the impersonality of it all.

“But I will say this,” Elizabeth told her son, taking his little hands in hers and clapping them while he cooed at her. “You were worth every minute of it. And your brother or sister would be worth as many minutes more.”

It was strange how sometimes she ached for what she had found so terribly disappointing.

Sometimes Edwin thought that perhaps he had been too fond of his father, who had loved him with every beat of his great, generous heart. His father had worked for years longer than necessary in order to make sure that his son would live the life of a gentleman. Edwin had had an expensive tutor and had later gone to one of the best schools in England and then to Cambridge. He had been given, in fact, every social and educational advantage that money could buy, as well as oceans of love.