Lady Griffith's Second Chance

Chapter One

Regan stood beside her son's bed, the light from her candle illuminating his sleeping face.

He slept like his father: sprawled across the bed, bare feet sticking out from beneath the edge of the blankets, his head nearly dangling over the side of the mattress while his pillow already lay in a rumpled lump on the floor. She set the candle on the nightstand, returned all of his gangling limbs to their proper positions, and swept his dark hair back from his brow before slipping the pillow back beneath his head.

She bent down to kiss his cheek, and still he didn't stir. Just like Edmund, she thought, before crossing to the other side of the room.

There, Maria slept in her bed, her small figure a contrast to her brother's while in repose. Not only did Maria's dark head still rest in the center of her pillow, but she had tucked her hands beneath her cheek, her pink lips forming a soft pout as she slumbered.

Regan gave Maria's blankets a perfunctory tug before leaning over to kiss her forehead. She was about to stand up and turn away when she paused to sweep an errant curl, a ribbon of hair as black as ink, from her daughter's cheek.

All of her children possessed their father's coloring, the same curling, dark hair and bright blue eyes. When they had been younger, she recalled her disappointment at their lack of her hazel-colored eyes or the auburn cast of her own hair. But then Edmund had gone and left her as a widow, making her forever grateful that in each of the children she had something by which to better remember him.

She fetched the candle from the nightstand and slipped from the room on quiet feet, though she knew both of them slept so soundly that nothing short of cannon fire would be enough to wake them. Further along the hall and several doors down from the nursery, she passed Katharine's bedchamber, but she didn't pause to knock. She had only just heard the faint rumble of a carriage on the drive, her aunt and Katharine no doubt returning from the Earl of Matchmore's dinner. It was late, yes, but not as late as the hours some members of the Kent gentry chose to keep. Regan smiled and wondered who had been the one more eager to return home for the evening, Aunt Agnes or Katharine herself.

Past a few more doors, the light from her candle casting distorted shadows on the dark panelled walls, and she arrived at her own suite of rooms. Inside her bedroom, the fire burned brightly, not yet been for the evening. She was about to shrug out of her robe and kick her slippers under the edge of the bed when a soft knock sounded on her door.

"Come in," she said, without bothering to look over her shoulder. She recognized the knock, and so was unsurprised when Aunt Agnes walked into the room, a rustling of silk and satin marking her entrance before the older woman had even drawn breath to speak.

"I thought you might still be up," Aunt Agnes said. She wore her ball gown, a green silk creation that stolidly adhered to the previous decade's fashions, though Regan knew the gown had been made for her aunt only a few months before. "I sent Katharine directly to her room. Lord knows, she'll most likely be awake for another hour yet before the excitement of the evening fades away."

Regan glanced at her bed with longing, but padded towards one of the armchairs near the fire instead. "It was a good evening, I take it?"

"For Katharine, I'm sure it was." Aunt Agnes heaved a dramatic sigh and insinuated herself into the armchair opposite Regan's. "She is quite the success, you know. The men of the county flock around her, and the more she turns her nose up at them, the more enamored they become." She shook her head, though her expression was light. "If her behavior was mere artifice, then I would be the first to call her out on it. But she truly doesn't seem to care for any of these gentlemen harboring a passion for her."