Page 23 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal (Love from London #3)

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 .

The boy had startled and cried when a horse kicked at a stable door with a loud bang .

Canterbury had shooed the governess away and picked the boy up from the dirt himself, holding him to his chest, running a hand over his head, and murmuring low consolation that only Arthur could hear.

After his son was set to rights, James instructed the governess to give him a ham sandwich, and off they went through the horses, father and toddling son, hand in hand.

At the time, Candace had listened to the tale with mixed feelings of curiosity and wonder.

What would it have been like to be raised in such a way?

Her own father had been exceedingly loving and kind in his own way, but never so demonstrative as that.

Her mother and governess had been the ones to soothe her childish terrors, to comfort all the small ills that feel so grave and large when one is so little.

“I appreciate you saying so. I only bring it up because I know it’s a topic of discussion among some people. I’ve had numerous gentlemen encourage me to marry again swiftly, so that I might displace the burden of parenting Arthur onto someone else.”

Candace pursed her lips and watched Arthur whooping his way through the grass, Seamus lumbering in his wake.

“I think you’ve done an excellent job with him.

He’s bright and enjoyable and very polite.

I’ve met an abundance of children in my lifetime.

Because I’m a lady, people always seem to think I’ll be delighted with each and every one.

Of course, manners dictate that I pretend that’s the case, but I assure you—children who are easy to like are very rare. ”

James chuckled, the corners of his eyes crinkling handsomely. “Is that so?”

She nodded and forced her eyes back to Arthur, who now was building some sort of pile of rocks for a reason only he could fathom.

“Most children are spoiled, selfish little grubs with sticky fingers and a whining cadence to their voice that only a mother—or father—could love. Their sole thoughts are about treats and chocolates and acting beastly toward the staff of a household.”

He shook his head, the remains of laughter still softening his face. “With that opinion, it’s a wonder you want any at all.”

“I said most children. I certainly was an exception to the rule.”

“Of course.”

She peered up at him with narrowed eyes. “I assure you—I was a very well-behaved child. I intend to ensure that any child of mine is the same: polite, intelligent, concerned with others. Much as you’ve done with Arthur.”

Candace trailed off with the sudden realization that she very well might not have any children. Not after the debacle with Shelbourne. Who would marry her now, except perhaps an elderly gentleman in need of a caretaker and companion?

No—her dreams of a family of her own were gone, ruined and broken as surely as the pot that Seamus had knocked over in the entryway. She’d have to discard those dreams of what her life would be and find new ones.

That’s what everyone kept asking her—what was she going to do now ? Now that she’d ruined her chance at all the things she truly wanted. What was she going to fill her days with, now that the love of a husband and the laughter of children were no longer possible for her?

What could be an adequate replacement for the dreams she’d nurtured in her heart since she was old enough to have any dreams at all? What could replace children? Painting? Pottery? Writing? Baking?

It wasn’t enough. She could throw herself headlong into passions for the rest of her life, and it still wouldn’t fill the aching emptiness left behind by the lack of all she’d ever wanted.

“Things feel very dark for you right now, Candace.” James’s voice canted low.

“They felt very dark for me once, too. All those nights carrying my son up and down the hallway while he cried for a mother who’d never answer him.

.. In those bleak hours, I doubted that the sun would ever rise again—literally and figuratively.

But slowly, I grieved what I’d lost, what Arthur had lost. Which is why I can stand here today and tell you that things will get better. I promise you that.”

“I think I’m arrogant,” she blurted, pulling her shawl more tightly around herself in an effort to warm a chill that had nothing to do with the pleasant breeze. “Look at me—all this wealth. I have a modicum of intelligence, a bit of beauty?—”

“Just a bit.” James smirked.

She frowned at him and continued. “I thought that life would continue to be as kind to me as it always has been. And now I wonder why I thought that. What arrogance, to think that I deserved future happiness simply because I’d experienced much of it in the past. Perhaps I’ve already used up my allotment of joy. ”

“There’s more ahead.”

“So you’ve said. But it isn’t a complaint when I say that. Some people don’t get any happiness—at least not on the scale that I’ve been gifted. Why should I think that I don’t deserve some darkness after all my days of sunshine? And yet—I can’t help mourn the storm, all the same.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing that I tell Arthur—one of the most profound truths that humans have fought against since the dawn of time—life isn’t fair.”

Candace exhaled indignantly. “I know that.”

“Do you? Because that unfairness works to our benefit more often than not. Why should you and I have plenty to eat, warm houses, this beautiful view?” He swept his arm to encompass the natural glory around them.

“So many others have so much less. It isn’t fair .

No matter who you are—from the lowliest pauper to the grandest king, someone would trade their troubles for your own in a heartbeat. ”

She shifted from one foot to another. “Thinking on such things makes me feel guilty.”

“That’s not my intent. But your task is the same as any other human’s on the face of the earth—to do well with what you’ve been given.”

“How do you do that? I mean, specifically—how do you do well with what you’ve been given?”

“I do the very best job I can at managing my estate, so that those who depend upon it for their livelihood can be secure and prosper. I’ve been given a son to raise, so I do that to the best of my intelligence.

That’s the difference between a dog and a son.

” He nodded toward Arthur and Seamus, who’d both paused to inspect a hole.

“ You train them both, but you only unleash one upon society. Someday, I will be gone, and Arthur will live on.”

He paused, then continued, “Who he becomes is important—not just now, but generations from now. Children aren’t entitlements.

Arthur isn’t here to fulfill my desire for children, or even to function as an heir to the estate.

He is a man in the making. Everything I do with him is centered around that fact.

I don’t discipline him to make my life easier, although that is a pleasant by-product.

I discipline him because it makes him better.

It molds the future man he will become.”

“As does the love and kindness you show him.”

James smiled. “True, although many parents experience self-indulgence on either end of that spectrum.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Explain.”

“Some parents don’t wish to be bothered with the hard work of discipline, so they forego it altogether. Other parents try and beat their children into frightened submission to their every whim. Both kinds of parents have their own laziness to blame.”

“An interesting interpretation of behavior. Have you ever thought of lecturing on the topic?” she teased.

He examined her from the corner of his eye. “We’ve strayed from the central point.”

“Which is?”

He turned to face her. “That you’ve been given much, even if you haven’t been given precisely what you want.”

“Oh, yes. That .”

“It’s your choice whether this unfortunate event comes to define your life or whether it becomes an irrelevant footnote that you hardly even remember. It will take time and your efforts to make it so, however.”

Candace tipped her head back melodramatically and closed her eyes. “If only gin were the solution some claim it to be.”

James laughed.