Aunt Dimity and the Duke ad-2

by Nancy Atherton

  “Hello, Mother.” Emma swiveled her chair to face the windows, where the bleak Boston skyline was etched against a lowering April sky.

  “Hi, Emma. Heard from that rat yet?”

  Emma’s gaze traveled up along the tangled strands of ivy framing the window. She reached for her pair of scissors. “No, Mother, I haven’t heard from Richard, and I don’t expect to.” Pinching the phone between her neck and shoulder, Emma stood and began pruning the tendrils of ivy. “I’m sure Richard is much too busy with his new life—”

  Her mother snorted. “His new wife, you mean. I told you a thousand times to marry that rat.”

  “And I’ve told you that I don’t see how marrying Richard would have changed the situation,” said Emma.

  “It would have given you some leverage in court! As it is—”

  “As it is, I own my own home, I have a very lucrative position as an executive at CompuTech, and I enjoy my freedom. I don’t think I have too much to complain about, Mother, do you?”

  Her mother sighed. “Honestly, Emma, I never expected a daughter of mine to just sit back and take it.”

  “What would you like me to do, Mother?”

  “Get angry! Throw his picture against the wall! React! That’s what normal women do. But not my daughter. I mean, Emma, honey, I know you’re trying to put on a brave face, but did you really have to go to the rat’s wedding?”

  “That had nothing to do with bravery,” Emma explained, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “It was simply a matter of facing reality.”

  “I’ll tell you about facing reality,” her mother echoed scornfully. “When a thirty-nine-year-old woman gets dumped for a twenty-two-year-old ditz, she doesn’t just shrug it off. You’re going to have to deal with your anger, dear heart, or you’re going to come apart at the seams!”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Mother.”

  There was a pause, followed by: “Okay. Have it your way. But just tell me one thing, Emma. Did you love that rat?”

  Emma winced as a long strand of ivy came away in her hand. “Mother, I’m afraid I have to go now. The Danbury project is due before I leave for England, and—”

  “Uh-huh. I thought so.”

  “Good-bye, Mother.” Emma hung up the phone and put the scissors away, afraid there’d be nothing left of the ivy if she continued to prune it in her present state of mind. Trust her mother to ask the most impossible questions. Emma was no starry-eyed idealist. She’d known from the start that her career would leave little room for a demanding emotional life. Marriage and motherhood were out of the question, and she’d given her heart to Richard, in part, because he’d understood that. Richard hadn’t been perfect—his twin passions for bad sci-fi movies and heavy-metal rock music were two reasons to be glad they’d lived apart—but he’d respected her self-sufficiency. Her mother could say what she liked; Emma had nothing—nothing—to complain about.

  Taking a calming breath, Emma sat down, swiveled her chair to face the desk, and leaned her head on her hands. In two weeks she’d be in England. She couldn’t wait to leave.

  Granted, she hadn’t counted on leaving alone. Emma pulled her long hair back into a pony tail, then bent down to retrieve the file of travel brochures that filled the bottom drawer of her desk. She leafed through them until she came to the map, which she spread over the installation specs for the Danbury project. Cupping her chin in her hand, she gazed at it eagerly.

  There was Cornwall, protruding like a broken branch from the southwestern tip of England, a jagged, irregular peninsula with the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the English Channel to the south. Emma had been to England many times and toured many gardens, but she’d never seen the gardens of Cornwall. She ran a finger along her intended route, pausing at the circled names: Cotehele, Glendurgan, Killerton Park, and the rest, private estates given over to the National Trust and open now to the pound-paying public.

  Richard had planned to close up the studio for the summer, to lay aside. fashion photography in favor of a more serious—some might say pretentious—pursuit: a black-and-white photo essay on the neolithic standing stones that dotted the Cornish landscape. Emma had been so absorbed in planning his trip as well as her own that she’d felt nothing but relief when he’d disappeared from her life for a few weeks.

  She’d had no reason to worry. Theirs had been an open relationship, of course, and Richard had a long track record of short-lived flings. There’d been no reason on earth to suspect that this one would be any different.

  Then the travel agent had called, informing her that Richard had canceled his airline tickets. Next,. Richard had telephoned, telling her that he’d met someone special. Finally, the wedding invitation had arrived, proof positive that Richard had disappeared from her life for good. Emma had shocked her friends and appalled her mother by attending the wedding, but she’d wanted to go. She’d needed to see the fairy princess with her own eyes.

  Emma refolded the map, smiling faintly. The fairy princess—that’s what Rita had dubbed Richard’s bride, and Emma had to admit that it was an apt description. Graceful, slim, and twenty years Richard’s junior, with hair like silken sunlight and eyes like summer skies, the fairy princess hadn’t walked down the aisle, she’d floated. And Richard had been waiting for her, rotund in his cummerbund, a sheen of perspiration on his balding pate, beaming at his wife-to-be with a smile that was disturbingly paternal. Emma blushed at the memory. It had been pathetic to see her free-spirited Richard succumb to something as trite as a mid-life crisis.

  Yet there it was. A fifteen-year relationship had ended with neither bang nor whimper, but with the whispery sound of an envelope slipped through a mail slot.

  She’d spent a long time in her garden after the wedding, raking over the compost and wondering why she felt so ... numb. Emma wasn’t given to expressing strong emotions, but even she had been surprised by the stillness that had settled over her. Was she in shock, as her mother insisted? Or was she merely going through a natural transition that would lead, ultimately, to a mature acceptance of her new situation? Emma preferred the latter explanation. She knew that there were some things in life she couldn’t change.

  But there were some she could. She’d gone back into the house and spent the rest of the evening gathering up the odds and ends Richard had left behind—a worn bath-robe, a broken tripod, a stack of CDs and rock videos. As she dropped the garish video boxes in the Goodwill bin, she thought wryly that Richard’s taste in music had been as juvenile as his taste in brides, and the small joke had heartened her. It seemed to prove that she was ready to face the world without Richard.

  Her friends—and her mother—remained unconvinced. They thought of her as a victim and expected her to behave like one.

  It was ludicrous. Why couldn’t her friends be honest with her? Why couldn’t they just come out and say what they were really thinking? “You’re no kid anymore, Emma. You’re forty, fat, and frumpy, and your chances of landing another man at this stage of the game are nil. We understand, and our hearts go out to you.”

  The faint smile returned as Emma put the map back in the bottom drawer. What a surprise it would be if she came home from England with a new man in tow—a six-foot-tall stunner with sapphire-blue eyes, broad shoulders, and ...

  Emma’s pleasant daydream faded as common sense reasserted itself. She didn’t need her mother to remind her that men—of all ages—preferred mates who were younger than themselves, girls who were graceful and slim, with hair like silken sunshine and eyes like summer skies. She knew that the doors of romance were more often than not slammed in the faces of plump, plain-looking women approaching middle age.

  Emma was proud of her ability to accept the truth, and she prepared for the trip accordingly. Come May, she would be in Cornwall, where she would feast on cream teas, explore pretty fishing villages, and, best of all, enjoy the springtime spectacle of massed azaleas in full bloom. She would do everything her heart desired. Except fall in love.

/>   “Never again,” she murmured, stifling a wistful sigh. “When I come back from Cornwall, I’ll buy a hammock for the garden and settle down to a life of industrious spinsterhood. But as for love—never again.”

  On that same day, in an Oxford suburb an ocean away, Derek Harris wiped the last trace of rain-spattered mud from the headstone on his wife’s grave. He could have left the task to the sexton, but Derek had worked with his hands long enough to know that, if you wanted a job done right, you did it yourself.

  He tucked the dirty rag into the back pocket of his faded jeans and rose to tower over the grave. He was a tall man, just over six feet, and his deep-blue eyes were shadowed with grief as he read the dates he’d carved into the roseate marble. It had been just over five years since pneumonia had taken her from him. The thought made his heart swell until he could scarcely breathe.

  “Ah, Mary,” he whispered, “I miss you.”

  The spiderweb tracery of budding trees stood black against a darkening sky, and a chill April wind moaned low among the gravestones. Derek shivered, and thought of going back to the house. Peter would be home from school by now, and Nell would be back from her play group, and their Aunt Beatrice would be stopping by to check up on them.

  Still he lingered by the grave, unwilling to face Beatrice’s barrage of questions. She’d already begun to nag him about his plans for the coming year. He wondered, not for the first time, how his sweet Mary could have had such a harridan for a sister.

  Wasn’t it a shame that Derek had wasted his first in history—taken at Oxford, too, more’s the pity—and gone into this mucky business of restoration? You’d hardly know he was an earl’s son, such an embarrassment to his family and such a keen disappointment for poor Mary. His university friends were respectable gentlemen by now—financiers and politicians, most of them—and here was Derek, at forty-five, still messing about with leaky thatched roofs, crumbling stone walls, and nasty old brasses. It had turned her hair gray to think of her only sister living in such a higgledy-piggledy household.

  And now it was turning her hair white (“as the driven snow, the cold and driven snow”) to think of poor Peter and Nell. Couldn’t Derek see that men weren’t meant to raise children? It was unnatural, unhealthy, and—“mark my words, nothing good will come of it.” Surely he must see that Peter and Nell would be better off in a stable home, with an aunt and uncle who adored them and had only their best interests at heart. Surely ...

  Angrily, Derek ground a clump of mud beneath the heel of his workboot. He’d promised Mary he’d keep the family together and nothing would make him break that promise. Mrs. Higgins was a splendid housekeeper, more than capable of looking after things when Derek was away. Thanks to her, the house was immaculate, the children were well kept, and Beatrice, search as she might, could find no solid ground for complaint. He made a mental note to put a little something extra in Mrs. Higgins’s pay packet before he and the children left for Cornwall.

  “Thank God for Grayson,” Derek murmured, blowing on his wind-reddened hands. The duke’s proposal had arrived last month—a stained-glass window to restore at Penford Hall—and, with it, an invitation. Bring Peter and Nell, his old friend had written, Spend the summer. It’d mean taking Peter out of school before the end of term, but Grayson had promised a governess to see to the boy’s lessons, and Beatrice, dazzled by Grayson’s tide, had been unable to object.

  Luckily, among Beatrice’s many shortcomings Derek could not, in all honesty, include a fondness for the tabloid press. Beatrice thought the scandal sheets “common” and thus remained blissfully ignorant of the dark rumors and innuendo that had surrounded the scion of Penford Hall five years ago. Fortunately for Derek, Mrs. Higgins, whose passion for the rags was second only to her devotion to the Sunday radio broadcasts of The Archers, was not on speaking terms with the beastly Bea.

  Derek had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity about the affair, and about Grayson, as well. Theirs had been an odd friendship, blossoming briefly during the summer Derek had spent touching up the ceiling in Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral, where Grayson, still a student, had been the organist for the local Bach chorale. Grayson had expressed a keen interest in Derek’s work, and they’d had a number of lively discussions over pints of ale at the Blue Boar. But at the end of the summer, when the old duke had died, the younger man had been off like a shot, never bothering to finish his degree. Derek hadn’t been the least bit surprised. He remembered how Grayson’s eyes had softened whenever he’d spoken of his boyhood home, how they’d blazed when he’d described his plans for its restoration.

  In the ten years that had passed since then, Derek had often wondered if his young friend’s grandiose plans had come to fruition. Well, soon he would find out. Come May, he’d be in Cornwall, restoring the window in the duke of Penford’s lady chapel.

  And after that? He balked at thinking beyond the summer. Somewhere, tucked into a far comer of his mind, was the thought that Peter and Nell should have a mother to look after them, but it was a thought he was not yet ready to contemplate.

  He doubted he would ever be ready. He knew he couldn’t bring himself to marry someone “for the sake. of the children.” The idea made his blood run cold. No, if he married again, it would be because he’d found someone to love, truly and with all his heart. And how could he do that, when his heart lay buried at his feet?

  “Never again,” he murmured, turning, stone-faced, for home. “Never again.”

  Peter Harris threw the scraps out for the cats and said aloud, to no one in particular: “The first of May. On the first of May, Dad’ll take us to Cornwall and everything will be all right.”

  Thus reassured, Peter closed the back door, put the breakfast dishes in the sink, wiped the crumbs from the table, and swept the kitchen floor, Mrs. Higgins should’ve put the place to rights before retiring to her room—that’s what Dad paid her for, wasn’t it?—but Mrs. Higgins had spent most of the afternoon snoring on the settee in the parlor. He trembled to think what might have happened had Auntie Beatrice caught her at it.

  “It’ll be over soon,” he murmured happily, and he believed it. Dad had shown him on the map—Penford Hall was a long way away from Auntie Beatrice.

  Peter capped the milk and put it in the fridge, checked to make sure the shepherd’s pie was in the cooker—Mrs. Higgins forgot sometimes—and took the box of soap flakes from the cupboard beneath the sink.

  Since his mother’s death, Peter had learned to clean the dishes and fold the linen and wash Nell’s hair without getting soap in her eyes. He’d learned to do the shopping and sort the bills and remind Dad to pay them. He’d learned that it was best to get Nell off to sleep before beginning his schoolwork, and he’d learned—the hard way—that Auntie Beatrice always checked under the beds for dust. Over the course of the past few years, Peter had learned what it was to be bone-tired and burdened and constantly alert.

  He’d never really learned what it was to be a little boy.

  Ten-year-old Peter pushed the step stool over to the front of the sink, climbed up, and turned on the tap. He was short for his age and slight of build, with his father’s deep-blue eyes and his mother’s straight dark hair. He’d inherited his mother’s sober manner as well, and perhaps that was why no one had noticed the changes wrought in him.

  Peter himself was unaware of the change. He’d accepted his lot from the first, hoping that a reason for it would one day be made clear to him. And with the arrival of the duke’s letter, the reason had appeared at last.

  It was the window. The window would be the most important job Dad had ever done, the most important job imaginable, and Peter had to make sure that nothing interfered with it. Because only when it was completed would Mum be truly at rest. Then Peter could rest, too.

  Peter turned off the water, then paused, distracted by a strange thumping noise in the hall. The sound was familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember where he’d heard it before. Puzzled, he stepped down from the
stool and crept to the hall door to peek out. The sight that met his eyes made his stomach knot with dismay.

  It wasn’t his usual reaction. Unlike most big brothers, Peter was fond of his five-year-old sister. Dad called Nell his changeling, because of her odd ways and fair hair, but she reminded Peter of a painting he’d seen in one of Dad’s picture books, a rosy-cheeked cherub with sparkling blue eyes and a mop of curls like Dad’s, only Nell’s were golden instead of gray. Admittedly, none of the cherubs in the picture books had carried a small, chocolate-brown teddy bear, but Peter could no more imagine his sister without Bertie than he could picture an angel without wings. And now the sight was making his stomach hurt.

  “Where did you and Bertie find those clothes, Nell?” Peter asked.

  “I am Queen Eleanor,” Nell announced, clutching Bertie with one hand and pinching the hem of her skirt with the other, “and this is Sir Bertram of Harris, and we do not speak with pheasants.”

  “That’s peasants, Nell.” Peter had known it would be a mistake for Dad to read the King Arthur stories to her, but that was not the immediate problem. The immediate problem was that Nell had dressed Bertie in Mum’s favorite silk scarf and herself in Mum’s pink flowery dress and white high-heeled shoes, and Dad was due home at any minute.

  “You must call me Your Majesty,” Nell corrected him. “And you must call Bertie Sir Ber—”

  “Nell, stop playing.”

  “I am Queen—”

  “Nell.”

  “Auntie Bea?” Nell spoke in her own voice, her eyes darting to the parlor door.

  Peter shook his head, relieved. Nell was cooperative enough once he got her attention, but Queen Eleanor could be stubborn as a mule.

  “No,” Peter explained, “those clothes. It’ll make Dad sad to see them.”

  “Will it?” Nell conferred briefly with Bertie before asking the inevitable: “Why?”