"Andrew! I don't know what to serve to an Earl! Why didn't you tell me—before?" Sam exclaimed.
She couldn't let her voice ring out the way she wanted to, since their guests were in the sitting room and it was hardly a stone's throw from the tiny kitchen where she battled the recalcitrant range daily for tea and a properly cooked chop. She was usually untroubled by the rather petite scale of their home, finding the closeness of the rooms led quite often to a quick embrace, a squeeze as she was passing by with the tea-things on a tray instead of the trolley her mother had favored, every corner fit for canoodling, a welcome distraction from the spells that sometimes, more frequently than she would like to admit, still took Andrew to a place, a time she couldn't follow. She'd gotten good at waiting during the war but she hadn't known it wouldn't end with the victory and there'd been no one to tell her. She'd thought Mr. Foyle, Kit she was supposed to call him now, he might have said something but when Andrew had sort of faded while they sat together after a dinner of freshly caught trout and potatoes she hadn't overboiled, she'd seen not recognition in his father's eyes but a sort of looking-glass, as if he too had gone away, his gaze unconcealed as it never had been before, the spark of him missing. Sam Stewart had been bold and impetuous whenever she got the chance, tired of the propriety of the vicarage, but Samantha Foyle found patience was a great virtue, even though she'd been stuffed to the gills with it as a girl.
She had worried a little over how the visit would go with Andrew's friend, a pilot from his last squadron, the one after Rex. She hadn't known Rex Talbot, so she could not be sure how he would have felt to know there were two eras for Andrew, ante Rex and post, but it was a particular kind of memorial and that meant something. But Andrew had been even-tempered and smiling since he asked whether she minded his asking them to tea without checking with her first, his friend and his friend's cousin who were coming up from London or down from their home in the country, she couldn't recall, since she'd been cleaning like mad since Andrew had told her, dusting and polishing and sorting through the tins in the cupboard for some delicacy they didn't have. Kit did—he had a veritable Aladdin's cave of treasures sent by his American friend Major Kieffer and he always insisted they take something home with them, but they didn't have his restraint and there was not one little luxury left to serve, not even a pot of damson preserves. There was Uncle Aubrey's greengage liqueur, but they kept that for its looks and not its flavor, not after the one time Andrew had decided to try it and she had refused to kiss him for the flavor of it on his sweet mouth.
It would not quite be potatoes and point, but she had been distinctly unenthused about what she'd be dishing up, though she'd scoured the shops close to the flat for something suitable for pudding, Bath buns or shortbread, not wanting to rely on her meager baking abilities. She'd managed to convince herself it wouldn't matter much what they ate if the company was good, and then Andrew had dropped his bombshell entirely nonchalantly and had seemed to expect her to respond in kind.
"Sam, I'm sure whatever you give us will be fine," Andrew said, reaching an arm around her to adjust the placement of a saucer on the tray, but mostly just taking the opportunity to let his hand rest against her waist on the withdrawal.
"It's too late to try and take them out to the pub, so I suppose it'll have to," Sam replied.
"This can't be what you're used to," she said to their guests, the Earl in a suit she now recognized was of a much higher quality than anything that hung in Andrew's wardrobe, the dark-haired woman beside him in the kind of slightly dowdy clothes that the upper classes favored, a dull, porridge colored jersey and a skirt that somehow put Sam in mind of a turnip.
"Oh, you'd be surprised what we're used to, wouldn't she, George? What we've gotten used to," the woman replied.
"I did think Carson might faint when he had to hand round Lord Woolton pie," George said, smiling. He must have dazzled the Wrens when he was in uniform, Sam thought, that bright blond hair, those clear blue eyes; only the most discerning would have noticed the shadow, the way he tightened his jaw.
"I thought he wobbled a little, until Aunt Mary gave him that look of hers, her King and Country one, not her Lady of the Manor."
"Syb!" George exclaimed, laughing.
"We have this family estate, you see, this absolute pile in the country, and it's really not so glamorous. It was, once, but taxes and the War—and thank goodness it is George's responsibility and not mine," Syb explained. "I'm not even a Lady, as you can plainly see, somewhere just above a poor relation and an ex-Land Girl to boot."
"Syb, you're exaggerating. She does that, quite a bit, I'm afraid," George said, taking a second biscuit.
"And where would you be without my, my, dramatic flair? Listening to Henry drone on and one about the garage, breaking up another quarrel between the twins? You rely on me, you know you do," Syb declared brightly. Sam had got quite good at paying attention to what was said and how, under Kit's tutelage and now with daily practice with Andrew and among the Oxford dons and she heard the affection in Sybil's voice, the anxiety and some frustration, how this was a speech she'd given before but that it meant something different now.
"I know I do, darling Syb. Let's not bore the Foyles though, with our juvenilia. You're always telling me, it's a brave new world and I want to know what Andrew is making of himself in it," George said. Later, when Andrew told her how George's father had been a barrister and how his mother was renowned for her sharp tongue as much as her beauty, how his aunt ran a wildly successful newspaper and wrote for it herself, Sam would appreciate even more how neatly George had turned the conversation, how comfortable he'd been able to make her, but in the moment, she only settled back to listen to Andrew talk and to wonder a world that had such creatures in it.