by Mary Balogh
“He was wrong,” Bertrand said.
“He was,” she agreed. “And of course he ought to have known better. But he cannot go back. Neither can we. I sometimes wonder what might have happened if during one of his visits we had thrown ourselves upon him and begged him to stay or to take us with him. But we never did. We had been taught to behave with quiet decorum, to be seen and not heard. And we doubted his love. So we can never know what might have happened. We cannot go back.”
“No,” he agreed.
“But though our upbringing was— Oh, it was really rather cheerless, was it not, Bert?” she said. “Even so, we were enormously fortunate to have an uncle and aunt willing to give up years of their own lives and even their own home to come here for our sakes. And they did love us, even though it was never in a really warm or demonstrative way. I think Mama must have hugged us a lot. Probably Papa too during that first year. He was the one trying to rock us to sleep, after all. He had been up most of the night with us because our nurse was exhausted and he had sent her to bed. Oh, if only we could remember. I have indeed forgiven him, Bert. And I do not feel damaged. Only different, perhaps, from what I might have been. Which is a foolish way to think. We are all different from what we might have been if this or that had been different. Life is nothing if not precarious. It is how we live it from day to day that matters, though.”
“You are not damaged, then,” he said. “Yet you are still unmarried, Stell, at the age of twenty-five, soon to be twenty-six. Even though you are titled, rich, and beautiful. Even though you sparkle with vitality and charm in company and have had so many offers I have lost count.”
That was a bit of an exaggeration. Actually a lot of an exaggeration. She was usually able to deflect ardor before it organized itself into a formal offer.
“You are twenty-five, almost twenty-six too,” she said. “Though you will always and ever be twenty minutes younger than I am. You are titled, rich, and handsome. You radiate warmth and charm in company. Yet you are still unmarried too. You have not even made any offers unless you have been very secretive about it.”
He closed his book and set it down on the small table beside his chair. “It is different for me,” he said. “I am a man. There is a difference, Stell, though I can see you are about to bristle and give me a lecture on the unfairness of it all.”
“And you believe I remain single because I am damaged?” she said. She closed her own book too after taking note of the page number, and slid it down between herself and the window.
“It has occurred to me,” he said. “Do you want to marry, Stell?”
She folded her arms beneath her bosom and gazed outward for a few moments. The rain was still sheeting down. The flowers in the beds were getting buffeted.
“Are you afraid I will still be here, an aging spinster sister, after you bring a bride to Elm Court?” she asked, turning her head back to smile at him. “Causing endless trouble?”
He grinned back. “I will ship you off to Redcliffe,” he said. “You can be a prop and stay to our father and stepmother in their old age.”
“Poor things.” She laughed. “And poor me. Of course I want to marry. But before you ask, I have no idea when and even less idea whom. I have not met him yet.”
“Would you know if you had?” he asked.
She thought about it. “Maybe not,” she admitted. “Though when I think of all the men I know— the single ones— I really cannot picture myself married to any one of them. Not that that is any indictment of them. There are some very pleasant and worthy men among them. But—”
For some reason she thought of the dark, dour stranger who had ridden into her life and out of it yesterday, passing her by without a word even though that vicious dog of his might have torn her limb from limb if he had been one moment later arriving upon the scene. She almost laughed. But Bertrand would want to know why, and she had not told him about the incident. He was quite capable of forbidding her to leave their property without male protection and they would end up squabbling and she would accuse him of sounding just like Aunt Jane and he would accuse her of not heeding good advice when she heard it simply because she found Aunt Jane tedious. Which would be grossly unfair. She loved their aunt.
“But?” he said, prompting her. “What sort of man are you looking for, Stell?”
“Oh, let me see. My dream man.” She pursed her lips and gazed out at the clouds. “Not tall, dark, and handsome, or he would be you. I love having you as a brother, Bert, but I would want something quite different in a husband.”
“Short, fair, and ugly, then?” he suggested.
“The thing is,” she said, “that I cannot really suggest a physical type that attracts me more than any other. But he would have to be … attractive. The trouble is, though, that it is a difficult word to define. Something that attracts. Or someone in this case. What are attractive qualities in a man, apart from just looks? Let me see. An open, pleasing countenance, I think. Smiling eyes, preferably blue. Yes, definitely blue. Good teeth, preferably white. A kindly manner. But with firm principles and the courage to stand by them. Charm. Kindness to all. Fellow feeling for all. Intelligence and some learning. A sense of humor. A regard for women as persons.”
“Passion?” he suggested when she paused to think some more.
She considered it— and her mind yet again touched upon that man, who had seemed to be coldness to the core. She shivered and hugged her arms more tightly.
“And passion,” she said. “And commitment and fidelity. No chères amies for my dream man.”
“Position? Wealth? Property?” he suggested.
“Well, I am tempted to say that they are of no importance whatsoever,” she said. “But that would be impractical. The idea of living on love alone goes too far into the realm of fantasy to be feasible. My husband would not have to be titled, but he would have to be of good birth and education, I believe. Otherwise we would have so little in common that there would not be enough to sustain a relationship when the first blush of romance had worn off. He would not have to be enormously wealthy or live in a mansion, but he would have to be comfortably situated. I do not believe I would be happy living in a hovel, waiting for him to snare a rabbit for me to skin and drop into a pot of stew with some thin gruel and vegetables I had pulled up from my scrubby little patch of garden.”
“And you would forever live in fear that he would be taken up for poaching and transported for seven years or so.” He laughed and sat up a little straighter in his chair.
“I would not,” she said. “I would not have married him in the first place.”
“But there would have to be a blush of romance?” he said.
“I did use those words, did I not?” she admitted. “Oh, I believe so. There must be something more than just a dispassionate decision that this man rather than any other will suit me as a husband. I just do not really know what that something is, though, Bert. Perhaps I will know it when I find it. If I find it. But he must be a man of impeccable character and reputation. I could not contemplate marrying a rake, even a reformed rake.”
“Like our father,” he said quietly.
“Well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and turning her face to the window again. “There you have me, Bert. For he was undoubtedly a rake, was he not? Yet I love him dearly. And I do believe he is the best of husbands now. He and Mother are terribly happy.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“But I am not our stepmother,” she said. “I could not do what she did. I would not take the risk. I could not marry a man with an unsavory past and be happy with him, no matter how much he had reformed. I want someone …”
“Perfect?” he suggested when she paused.
“Well.” She laughed softly and turned to swing her legs to the floor. “It is not too much to ask, surely, when I have waited so long. Someone perfect?”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it may explain why you are twenty-five and unwed.”
“And what a
bout you?” she asked. “What are you looking for in a wife?”
“I am not,” he said.
“But when you do?” she asked. “You are not intending to remain single all your life, are you?”
“I could not do it even if I wanted to,” he said. “I have the succession to take care of. I am Papa’s only son. And he has only the one brother. I cannot imagine that Uncle André will ever marry. Can you?”
“No,” she said. She was dearly fond of her uncle, but he reminded her of an overgrown boy, ever cheerful but sadly addicted to all forms of gaming and convinced that the very next bet he made would bring him the fortune that would set him up for life. Meantime his pockets were almost always to let, and Estelle suspected he was never free of debt.
“I do not know what type of woman I will look for when I start searching,” Bertrand said. “But definitely not someone perfect, Stell. Such a one sounds to me like more than a bit of a snore.”
“Someone imperfect, then,” she said.
“She sounds infinitely more interesting,” he said. “Quite irresistible, in fact. Introduce me if you should meet her before I do. Are you going to ring for some tea? Or shall I?”
“I am on my feet,” she said, standing up to prove it. “I will ring.”
It did sound a bit dull when put into words—someone perfect. But then perfection would preclude dullness, would it not? A dull man could not possibly be perfect, for he would lack that certain something that would make him perfect. And if she thought any more upon these lines, her head would surely make a complete turn on her neck and make her dizzy at the very least.
She pulled the bell rope.
She had not asked Bertrand, she realized, if he felt damaged. She suspected he did, that he always had. Something she had worked her way past had stuck with her twin. She now loved their father without reservation. Bertrand loved him, but …
Well, there did seem to be a but.
Justin was outside walking. He had come around to the back of the house, because when he had been at the front he had felt as though he were being watched from the sitting room— with resentment and hostility. As though he had been preventing Maria from being out there herself, tending the roses. He had invited her to stroll with him, but she had refused.
She was like a block of marble, even worse than he had expected. She had been easily recognizable, though he had not seen her for twelve years. Of medium height, she was slender to the point of thinness, with blond hair that was thicker and shinier than it had been when she was a child. She had a pale, delicate complexion in a narrow oval face, with a pointed chin and large blue eyes. She was beautiful, but in the way of a marble statue more than of a living woman, and a woman of twenty at that. She ought to be vibrant with youthful energy and chafing at the bit, eager to start living again, to go out into the world to mingle with her peers and fall in love. She was free of what must have been a heavy burden of nursing her mother through a long, increasingly debilitating illness until her eventual death. She was at the end of her year of mourning.
He had not seen one spark of vitality in her since his arrival. He did not know if it was just because he was here. If she had been surprised to see him two days ago, she had not shown it beyond a certain stillness when the housekeeper had announced him and he had stridden into the sitting room perhaps with more of a masterly stride than he ought. But he had been nervous, damn it. Within moments, however, she had got to her feet, made him a deep curtsy, and greeted him with a single word.
“Brandon,” she had said.
Her companion had curtsied to him too.
“Maria?” he had said. “And Miss Vane, I assume?”
His sister had said no more. Her companion had inclined her head to indicate that yes, he had correctly identified her.
He could not even remember what he had gone on to say. Nothing much. Nothing that had warmed the atmosphere even one degree.
Silence did not seem to disconcert Maria. She seemed to feel no social obligation to initiate conversation during a lull or to pick up and enlarge upon any topic he introduced. She was the mistress of the monosyllabic answer. She displayed no curiosity about the brother she had once adored and had not seen in twelve years. She asked no questions about his journey or his reason for coming here. She had said nothing during that first meeting about instructing the servants to prepare a room for him or set a place for him at the dinner table. She had not asked how long he intended to stay.
He wondered exactly what her mother had told her about him. And what their father had told her.
He had left Captain out in the stables, in the care of the lone groom who worked there. His dog had not been happy about it, but he knew how to take orders— and how to express his displeasure over ones of which he disapproved. Drooping ears and jowls, and eyes he could make look as though they too drooped at the outer corners. An ambling gait as he walked slowly on his large paws, head down, looking like an octogenarian. None of it had caused Justin to relent.
For what had remained of the day of his arrival he had contented himself with behaving more or less like a guest, though he had asked to be directed to a bedchamber. It was Miss Vane who had taken charge after a glance at a silent Maria. She had shown him to the room the housekeeper informed her had been prepared for him. It was Miss Vane who told him when dinner would be served.
Yesterday, since courtesy was getting him nowhere with Maria, he had asserted himself as the owner of Prospect Hall. He had spent time with the housekeeper and inspected the kitchen and pantries with her. He had sat down at the desk in her office and examined the account books. He kept no steward here, just as his father had not, since the size of the house and grounds and the farmland beyond them did not justify the extra expense. He had a man of business who managed all the smaller properties of the earldom from his office in London and sent regular and detailed reports. The man had proved both honest and efficient, as Justin had expected. He had worked for the late earl for twenty years before his death.
Since it had been raining too heavily for him to go out, he had asked the housekeeper if he might have the use of her room for a short while longer and had summoned Miss Vane. He had asked her if she was satisfied with her position as companion to his sister when she had been originally hired as a governess. Yes, she had told him. It was Maria herself who had begged her to stay when the countess had decided that her formal education was over after she turned seventeen.
“Only seventeen?” Justin had said.
“The countess, her mother, needed her, my lord,” Miss Vane had told him. “She was ill and required almost constant company and assistance.”
“None of the nurses I sent were as good as they were reputed to be?” he had asked her.
“They did not suit the countess,” Miss Vane had said. “She preferred her daughter.”
“Not you?” Justin had asked her. “Did you help nurse her, Miss Vane?”
“She preferred her daughter, my lord,”she had said.
She was a serious, dignified young woman. She had looked him in the eye as she spoke to him, but she would not open up to him, he suspected, and give anything more than a brief factual answer to any question he asked. Which was fair enough. She was an employee. She had her livelihood to protect. He suspected she might be fond of his sister.
“It was Maria rather than the countess who persuaded you to remain in the capacity of companion after your duties as governess were terminated, then?” he had asked.
“Yes, my lord,” she had said. “She persuaded the countess that she needed me. And she wrote to your man of business in London for permission, since it is you, I believe, who pays my salary.”
“Nursing her mother single-handed must have been hard on my sister,” he had said.
“Yes, my lord,” she had said. “But it is what daughters do.”
And hard on Miss Vane too, he did not doubt. She was clearly a gentlewoman. She was almost certainly impoverished, or at least her father was. This co
uld not be much of a life for her. But one could not always choose one’s own way of life or even one’s occupation, as he knew well from personal experience. At least she was employed. And he knew she was well paid.
“You are prepared to continue as my sister’s companion?” he had asked her. “Though it will entail a removal to Everleigh Park?”
She had hesitated. “I would be uncomfortable going so far from my own home, my lord,” she had said. “From my father’s home, that is. My mother gave birth again a year ago. She is not a young woman. Four of my brothers and sisters are under the age of ten. I believe she is finding it hard to cope. I … I would rather not go so far away.”
He would guess her age to be somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, Justin thought. How many children were there, for God’s sake? And how old was her mother? Fortunately, it was not his concern.
“I understand,” he had said. “I will see to it that you are paid the equivalent of six months’ salary when you leave here, Miss Vane. And I thank you for your service to my sister.”
“That is very generous of you, my lord,” she had said.
He had got to his feet and indicated the door behind her. It was a disappointment. Compelling Maria to leave here to return to Everleigh Park with him was going to be even more difficult than he had thought.
This morning the rain had stopped and Justin had found the foreman of the farm and inspected the barns and granaries and fields and the cattle sheds and sheep pens. He had spoken with some of the laborers and even looked in upon the cottages of a couple of them and spoken with their wives. As he had expected, though, all seemed to be running smoothly. No one expressed any outstanding grievances.
This afternoon he was having a good look around the park— or garden, rather. It did not quite qualify in size as a park. It was very pretty, nevertheless, and well cared for. The showpiece was the front garden and its profusion of flowers, most notably roses. All the beds and trellises and surrounding banks of shrubs made of it the quintessential English country garden against the backdrop of the gray stone manor.