by Mary Balogh
“I will wait here for you,” she said as she closed the door.
Estelle changed into an afternoon dress her maid had pulled from the top of her trunk and had a quick wash. She sat while Olga took down her hair, brushed it smooth, and coiled it neatly high on her head.
A short while later she left her room with Maria and knocked on her brother’s door. He offered an arm to each of them as they went down to the floor below and along a wide corridor to the drawing room, a magnificent apartment directly above the great hall.
Seven
Justin stood by the fireplace in the drawing room later that evening, feeling cautiously optimistic. He had not really planned for everyone to arrive within a day of one another, but that was the way it had turned out. It had all been a bit hectic and dizzying, but here they were, and so far there had been no open disasters.
All his guests had arrived by the middle of the afternoon today, with the result that everyone had been able to meet one another at tea. Hearty Yorkshire accents had mingled with refined aristocratic voices, but it had all been perfectly amiable. He had half feared that the late countess’s relatives might huddle at one end of the room while his father’s took possession of the other end and Maria sulked between the two groups, the Lamarrs hovering on either side of her, and his aunt Betty and family tried to make themselves invisible wherever they could. It had not happened.
At dinner a short while ago he had deliberately not assigned places at the long table. He was not sure if anyone had been surprised by that or offended by it— he ought, perhaps, to have directed Aunt Augusta, Lady Crowther, to the place to the right of his at the head of the table, and Lady Maple to his left. But no one had made any comment, and none of the individual families had huddled together and shied away from everyone else. When he had come here to the drawing room with the men half an hour after Maria led the ladies from the dining room, everyone had mingled yet again.
Leonard Dickson, Maria’s uncle, was standing with him now, as were Sidney Sharpe, the cousin on his mother’s side who was closest to Justin in age, and Bevin Ormsbury, Aunt Augusta’s eldest son, also close to Justin in age. Doris Haig, Sidney’s sister, had just wandered up to join them.
“The children are settled for the night?” Justin asked her. Eliza and Edward were seven and five years old respectively.
“They were excited by the presence of your children, Bevin, and inclined to be mutinous despite Martin’s dire threat of consequences if they made one more excuse for rising from their beds,” Doris said, grinning. “But then Megan Chandler poked her head around the door of the room they are sharing and offered to read them a few stories if it was fine with us. It was perfectly fine with us. What a very sweet niece you have, Mr. Dickson.”
Megan, the youngest child of Maria’s aunt Patricia and Irwin Chandler, her husband, was fifteen. It was a frustrating age, Justin remembered. Not a child, not an adult. She had been allowed to join the family for dinner, but afterward, despite a halfhearted plea to her father, she had been sent back to the nursery floor by her mother.
“I do, indeed, Mrs. Haig,” Dickson said. “She is a lass any uncle would be proud of. Always willing to help out wherever she can. Did you put a limit on the number of stories? Any self-respecting child would insist upon at least ten before admitting to being sleepy.”
“Oh dear,” Doris said. “I did not. Poor Megan.”
She joined in Dickson’s hearty, booming laughter. He was the owner of a textile mill and undoubtedly a wealthy man. Irwin Chandler, his brother-in-law, was a prosperous banker, portly and a bit self-important, but not unlikable. Their aunt, Lady Maple, did not share their broad Yorkshire accents. She spoke, rather, with an almost exaggeratedly upper-class voice and, it seemed to Justin, looked with some condescension— often through her long-handled lorgnette— upon her provincial relatives. The late countess, Maria’s mother, had spoken similarly to her aunt. Her voice had never betrayed her origins.
His aunt Betty was sitting some distance from the fireplace, surrounded by Margaret Dickson and Patricia Chandler from the late countess’s side of the family and Justin’s aunts Augusta and Felicity on the late earl’s side. They were engrossed in what looked like a comfortable conversation.
The Lamarrs must be finding this gathering of people a bit confusing, Justin thought. Most if not all must be strangers to them. These people also belonged to three distinct family groups. The brother and sister were not showing any sign of confusion, however. They were clearly adept at mingling at their ease with all sorts of people, even strangers, even those of the middle class.
“How different Everleigh seems now, Justin, than it did when we used to come here as children,” Doris said. “I remember it as all twists and turns, a positive maze of corridors and staircases. I was constantly getting lost and panicking.”
“I remember loving it for just that reason, Dor,” Sidney said. “We could hide all day and then pretend we had got lost. Mama used to hug us and cluck over us instead of scolding, while Papa looked skeptical but would not accuse us of lying.”
“You might have loved it, Sid,” his sister retorted. “But part of your glee—yours and Ernie’s—came from deliberately losing me. Remind me never to forgive you.”
“I do recall being put in the west wing, as we have been now, when we came for Lilian’s wedding to your father, Brandon,” Dickson said, “and ending up lost somewhere in the east wing when I ran up to my room for something. I had to beg for directions from a passing servant.”
“I was very young when I came here last, Justin,” Bevin said. “I scarcely remember it at all even though Mama and Aunt Felicity like to talk about growing up here. I look forward to the grand tour you have promised.”
“I look forward to giving it,” Justin told him.
Maria was over by the pianoforte with some of the young people, a promising sight. Lady Estelle was with them. Rosie Sharpe, his young cousin, was sitting on the pianoforte bench, her back to the instrument. The others were standing in a semicircle around her. There was a burst of laughter from their direction even as Justin looked.
“Maria is really quite lovely, Justin,” Doris said, following the direction of his gaze. “She is on the pale side and a bit thinner than she ought to be, but losing her mother must have been a terrible ordeal for her. Apparently she nursed the countess almost single-handedly throughout her lengthy illness until she died.”
“It need not have been that way,” Leonard Dickson said, clearly annoyed. “And so I have told my niece. If Lilian had written to us or got someone else to write to us, we would have been there, Margaret and I, and I daresay Patricia and Sarah too, as fast as horses could gallop. If Lilian was alive at this moment, I would be hard put to it not to give her a good shake. Poor Maria. She could certainly do with some meat on her bones. I absolutely agree with you, Mrs. Haig. Though girls these days seem to have the daft notion that the thinner they are, the more the boys will like them.”
Irwin Chandler, Justin’s uncle Rowan Sharpe, and his uncle Harold Ormsbury were in conversation together. Lady Maple was seated on the side of the room farthest from the pianoforte, alone until Viscount Watley took a seat close to her and engaged her in conversation. Everyone else was either part of a group or moving from one to another.
Yes, it was all working out as Justin had hoped it would and feared it might not. Though it was early days yet, of course.
Uncle Rowan, tall and thin, with a narrow, kindly face and bushy eyebrows turning gray to match his unruly hair, came to join Justin’s group, bringing young Nigel Dickson with him.
“You have an impressive library, I saw this afternoon while you were busy greeting new arrivals, Justin,” his uncle said. “I remember that about Everleigh. Though you have added to it since I saw it last.”
During the past six years, yes. He had traveled light before that, but books had been his one indulgence since inheriting the title and having a fixed home again— and money to spare.
> “I have,” Justin said. “Though I am always open to recommendations.”
His uncle, a gentleman with a modest private fortune, was something of a scholar and spent much of his time immersed in his studies, mostly of astronomy and mathematics. He had always been a family man too, however, interested in and involved with his children— and now his grandchildren— and proud of them all. Justin, as his only nephew on his wife’s side, had always been included in that group.
“If you have a sheet of paper long enough, Justin,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “I will make a list for you.”
“With the heading Books to Make You Snore,” Sidney said, grinning and slapping a hand down on his father’s shoulder.
“Oh, please, sir,” Nigel said in all earnestness. “Would you make a list for me too?” The boy was at Cambridge and was apparently a serious student.
Lady Estelle had linked an arm through Maria’s and was leading her toward Lady Maple. Ernest Sharpe joined them there, and soon a small cluster of young people was gathered about the old lady, who was holding court, her lorgnette waving about in one hand, looking rather pleased with herself. Viscount Watley meanwhile had given up his seat to Maria and then moved away to talk with the older ladies gathered about Aunt Betty.
“Ernie is such a dreamer,” Sidney said, indicating his younger brother with a jutting of his chin. “Lady Estelle Lamarr is far beyond his orbit. And that is not just because she is the daughter of a marquess.”
“You think you would have a better chance with her, then, Sid?” his sister asked.
“That was not my point, Dor,” he said, but he did look a bit abashed.
“Lady Estelle Lamarr is a true lady,” Leonard Dickson said, beaming with hearty approval. “As is my niece. Lady Maria Wiley. I am only sorry we never saw her while she was growing up or during the years when she had it so hard nursing Lilian. No young person should have to do that alone. Young people should be able to enjoy their youth— with plenty of support from their families, aunts and uncles and cousins as well as just parents. Like my boys, even if Nigel here did turn out to be bookish and not at all interested in kicking up his heels for a year or three. Sebastian at least is interested in the mill. Although, come to think of it, he has never kicked up his heels either. Margaret and I have been blessed with good boys. But no daughters. Thank goodness for nieces.”
“Studying is how I enjoy my youth, Pa,” his younger son said. “And you and Ma have always encouraged me even if you do not quite approve of the path I have chosen.”
“Well,” his father said, beaming. “I do, I must confess, like making mention to my colleagues and competitors of my son the Cambridge scholar.”
Lady Estelle Lamarr was almost certainly in her mid-twenties, Justin thought. Why the devil was she not already married? Everything about her—everything— made her into surely one of the most eligible ladies in England. Just as her brother must be one of the most eligible bachelors. Of which number he was probably one too now, he supposed. He had not really thought of himself that way. Of course, he was almost an unknown to the ton. Though that very fact might actually enhance his eligibility. The elusive earl and all that nonsense.
For a moment he longed to have his old life back, the one he had lived for the six years before his father died and still did whenever he could get away for a few weeks or longer. He missed his friends. He had had women during that time too. Three of them in total, two for just a few months apiece, one for longer. In fact, he still saw Gertie occasionally, though it was strictly a friendship now. She had insisted from the start that she did not want anything permanent, and that had suited him. She had had one husband, she had told him. He had died, and she was happy to run with her good luck for the rest of her days. When word had reached him of his father’s death and she had learned that he was now an earl, she had laughed with what had seemed like genuine amusement and told him he had better go away before her customers started calling her countess and getting themselves clipped about the ear for their cheek. Gertie was the widow of a publican and since his death had run the tavern he had owned. The tavern where Justin had acquired his broken nose.
His father’s death had forced him to return to the life of a gentleman, or, rather, to that of an aristocrat. And let no one try to tell him that birth and position and money gave a man freedom. They gave him a lot, admittedly, but freedom was not part of it. Six years later he was still adjusting to life as the Earl of Brandon. Sometimes it seemed almost as though Juss Wiley, his alter ego, had ceased to exist.
He did miss the old life, dash it all. And he resented this life and the responsibilities it had brought him. Including Maria. But there were other duties too, and some of them he had still not faced. He gazed at Lady Estelle Lamarr while conversation flowed around him, and he found himself resenting her. For whenever she looked at him, she saw a dour barbarian. And that was at least partly his fault. He was dour. He had not always been so. He had learned dourness and silence and self-containment as a defense against a world that was often hostile and sometimes downright dangerous to vagrants, especially vagrants with soft hands and fine linen and fastidious ways and accents that inspired ridicule at best, violence at worst.
He had taken on some of the burdens of his position in the past six years. There were others he had been avoiding.
He stepped away from his group and approached the one around Lady Maple. She was in the middle of telling the young people how she had been considered a rare beauty when she was a girl and how she had caught the eye of Sir Cuthbert Maple at an assembly in Harrogate and nothing would do for him but he must have her. He had proposed to her that very night and married her, by special license, one week later.
“What a very romantic story, Great-aunt Bertha,” Gillian Chandler said with a sigh.
If Justin had the rights of it, Lady Maple had been barely eighteen when she married, while her groom had been sixty. She had been a wealthy widow at nineteen and had remained single ever since.
“You introduced my mother to my father,” Maria said. “And they married one month later.”
“Five weeks,” Lady Maple said, pointing her lorgnette at her great-niece. “Your papa insisted upon having banns read.”
Rosie Sharpe, Justin’s youngest cousin, had seen him standing slightly behind her chair and turned to look up at him.
“I could have died, Justin,” she told him, “when you walked into the drawing room with the other men after dinner. Of all my accomplishments, none of which will ever win me widespread acclaim, pianoforte playing is the most dismal.”
“Then the others cannot be bad at all,” he said. “What is your best accomplishment?”
“Baking, actually,” she said. “Cakes and scones and éclairs and biscuits. But Mama complains that I am making her fat.” She laughed and looked very pretty. She still had the freckles across her nose that he remembered from when she was a young child. “And Papa complains that I am not making him fat enough.”
He could remember hugging her that morning more than twelve years ago before he left to ride off into the unknown. He had pretended she was Maria, whom he had not been allowed to hug at all. Or even see.
“And what are some of your main interests?” he asked Gillian Chandler.
“Carpentry,” she said without hesitation. “Papa is trying to get Wallace interested in it, for he says it is a worthy career if one has the skills. My brother is just not interested, however. I am and I have even made a few things, which are not terribly good but would be very much better if only I had a proper instructor. Papa says a girl cannot be a carpenter. It is very provoking.”
Chandler did not follow his brother-in-law’s practice of allowing his children to follow their dreams, then? But Dickson did not have daughters.
“It is,” Justin agreed. “Why should you knit or paint with watercolors when you would far prefer to be sawing and pounding nails?”
“Exactly! Oh, Cousin Justin—may I call you that though you are
not, strictly speaking, my cousin?” she said. “Cousin Justin, I like you. How fortunate Maria is to have you for a brother. Perhaps I can exchange you for Wallace.”
She and Rosie and Paulette Ormsbury, Aunt Augusta’s youngest child, went off into peals of laughter while Maria bit her lower lip and Lady Estelle smiled and looked amused.
“A young lady’s foremost duty to herself is to secure a husband who can support her well during his life and leave her independently established when he dies,” Lady Maple said, drawing everyone’s attention back to herself. “Then she may think of doing something as cork-brained as learning carpentry. If she is wise, however, she will always leave the cooking to the servants. Otherwise, they may come to look down upon her, and that is never a desirable thing.”
Lady Estelle was looking even more amused when Justin caught her eye. But her smile quickly faded.
Only a barbarian, he supposed, would encourage a girl to make a cabinet rather than knit a scarf or paint a landscape.
The following morning was cloudy but warm with no noticeable wind. Although everyone was eager for the promised tour of the state apartments, it was a pity to waste a fine morning indoors, it was agreed at breakfast. It might be raining by this afternoon. Maria spoke up with a suggestion. She offered to take anyone who was interested to the lake to see it and the Chinese bridge and the waterfall, though she warned it was a longish walk.
Now, half an hour later, Maria was outside under the portico with an eager group of the young cousins. Estelle and Bertrand were out there too. It was getting a bit crowded. A few of the older couples were strolling among the parterres, having decided to stay closer to the house in case it rained, as it very well might.
Estelle, looking across the formal gardens to the river and the rock gardens and wooded slope beyond, down which they had traveled yesterday, thought that surely a lovelier stately home could not exist anywhere. What a pity it was not also a happier place. Though perhaps it would be in time. Certainly all the guests here seemed to be a congenial lot, and it must be remembered that it was the Earl of Brandon, stiff and humorless as he seemed to be, who had invited them all here— for the sake of his sister. And he had sympathized last evening with young Gillian’s dream of being a carpenter.