Someone Perfect (Westcott Book 10)

by Mary Balogh

  No one spoke for a while.

  “Papa wrote to you but Mama never did?” Maria asked at last.

  “The earl your father was a very kind gentleman, Maria,” Mrs. Dickson said, evading the second part of Maria’s question.

  “And a very honorable man,” Mr. Dickson added. “He never for a moment made us feel during the week we were here for the wedding that we were inferior in any way. He was interested in our lives. I can remember him shaking my hand and calling me brother after the wedding.”

  “His son, your brother, is like him in a number of ways,” Mrs. Chandler said. “Maria, are you quite sure he took Lilian’s jewelry? He must have been a very wealthy young man. One cannot imagine why he would have done such a spiteful and wrong thing. And he seemed a very pleasant boy when we were here. He was only thirteen or fourteen, I seem to recall.”

  “Of course I am sure,” Maria cried. “And of course Papa was sure. He sent him away, never to return. He never mentioned his name again.”

  “Your father gave theft as the reason for what he did?” Mrs. Chandler asked.

  “I was eight years old,” Maria said. “Papa said nothing. He would not say why Jus— He would not say why his son was gone. And Mama would not say in his hearing. But I think it killed him. He changed after that. He was sadder. And thinner. He spent more time than ever with me, and he smiled a lot and was always kind. But he was not … fun any longer. He did not laugh.”

  “Oh, Maria.” Mrs. Chandler got to her feet, closed the distance between them, and drew her niece up and into her arms. “I am so sorry you lost your papa when you were so young. And that you went through all you did with your mama without any of us to help you. I am so sorry.”

  They were weeping then in each other’s arms, and Mr. Dickson was blowing his nose loudly into his handkerchief while Mr. Chandler stood and went to stand in the gap between the windows and looked out.

  “You loved her all the time, then?” Maria asked when she could. “You love me?”

  “Aye, lass,” Mr. Dickson said as he stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “You are our niece. Our flesh and blood. We won’t let you be all alone ever again, even if you go and marry a duke. You are stuck with us from now on, whether you like it or not.”

  Maria was laughing through her tears. “Oh, I like that,” she said as her uncle got to his feet to enfold her in his arms.

  It was not happily-ever-after, Estelle thought as she stood quietly and moved to the doorway and through it, past Mr. Chandler. Maria had genuinely loved her mother and still did. It was perfectly clear that the late Countess of Brandon had been a thoroughly disagreeable woman. It was not to be expected that Maria would fully accept that, however. So perhaps she would always be a bit suspicious of the version of events her aunts and uncles— and her great-aunt— had given. And they understood that and sympathized with her. And loved her. They would have a relationship with her going forward, and she with them. The Earl of Brandon had been right to invite them.

  She was not needed here any longer, Estelle decided. Maria had not needed her at all, in fact, except as moral support. She drew a few deep breaths of the summer air and thought that after all she would have time to walk to the lake. She did not need company. Indeed, the chance of an hour or so of solitude seemed quite blissful.

  She turned her steps in that direction.

  Thirteen

  Justin did not know how long he had been sitting in the grotto— he had not brought a watch with him— but he did not think it was important to hurry back. However, it seemed that his peace was in danger of being shattered. Captain had scrambled up onto his haunches and was panting while he gazed intently outward.

  “Quiet, Cap,” Justin murmured.

  A lone figure had come into sight, strolling along the bank of the lake in the direction of the bridge. His first instinct was to withdraw farther back into the cave until she went away. But if she should decide to sit on the bank as she had beside the river north of her home a few weeks ago and remove her shoes and stockings and lift her skirt up over her knees and then look up and see him anyway, she would be horribly embarrassed, and he would feel like a Peeping Tom. He stayed where he was. His dog was still alert and watching, but he was no longer panting.

  Lady Estelle Lamarr, Justin suspected, liked solitude as much as he did. Else why had she been alone that day by the river? Why was she alone now? And why was she still unmarried and presumably content to live with her twin in a modest manor in the depths of the country when she could probably marry very eligibly anytime she chose?

  He did not want to be alone with her. He had made a thorough ass of himself at the summerhouse with his proposal of marriage and the subsequent kiss— after she had refused his offer. He had felt an inconvenient attraction to her later that same day when he stopped for a private conversation with her during the tour of the state apartments. That had been unwise. He had kept his distance from her as much as he could during the days since then.

  She did not sit on the bank. She strolled all the way to the bridge and halfway across it before stopping under the roof, just at the bend, to gaze at the falls as he had done earlier, her arms crossed on the balustrade before her and pushing up her bosom as she leaned on them. With just a slight turn of the head she would be looking right at him. Would she see him in the shadows? Or his dog?

  Why wait to find out?

  “It is one of the loveliest sights in the park,” he said, raising his voice so she would hear him above the sound of rushing water.

  She looked both ways, startled.

  “Over here,” he said. “To your left.”

  She surprised him by smiling when she saw him. “That looks like fun,” she said.

  “I always thought we should have a resident hermit here,” he said. “But it might be considered a little eccentric.”

  “Counting his beads and plaiting his beard?” she said. “It would be very picturesque. Who would bring him food, though? Or her. Are there female resident hermits? It would be a great injustice to women if there were not.”

  “I thought they lived on air,” he said. “Hermits of both genders, that is.”

  “Oh dear, their lives must be very tedious, then,” she said. And laughed.

  “It would be a long walk from the kitchen three times a day,” he said. “The servants would start handing in their notice en masse. Perhaps it is as well we have never had a hermit.”

  His mother and father used to talk nonsense sometimes. He could remember one time becoming helpless with giggles as he listened until they turned to him and his father pounced upon him and tickled him while his mother urged him to stop before he made Justin ill. Where the devil had that memory come from?

  “Come and see,” he said. “It is just a cave, but it has always been known as the grotto.”

  “And why not?” she said, walking to the end of the bridge and descending the steps to the grass. “Grotto is a far more romantic word. How do I get there?”

  “Go and fetch her, Cap,” he said, and his dog bounded out and down to her.

  There were rocks. Big, smooth, flat boulders like giant steps. It was neither a difficult nor a dangerous climb and really the grotto was not far above the level of the lake anyway. He stepped out to offer his hand, but she did not need it. She made her way carefully toward him, one hand on Captain’s back, while Justin wondered why on earth he had invited her inside the cave.

  “The blankets and cushions are not damp and moldy,” he assured her when she lowered her head and peered inside. “They are stored in the boathouse with towels for swimmers.”

  “Is there a boat too?” she asked.

  “Yes, there is,” he told her.

  “It is quite splendid,” she said of the cave, “and far bigger than it looks from the outside. Did you use it as a place to hide when you were a boy? I bet you did.”

  “You would not lose your wager,” he said.

  She came right inside and sat on the blanke
t he had spread earlier. She arranged a cushion behind her back, then took off her bonnet when she discovered that she could not lean her head back with it on. She set it down beside her. They sat across from each other, their knees drawn up, not quite touching.

  “I thought you were with Maria,” he said.

  “I was,” she told him. “One of the gardeners gave a large group of us a very interesting tour of the greenhouses. He knows everything there is to know about all the plants, including the countries from which they all came. Everyone went their own way after that. Maria’s Yorkshire aunts and uncles went off to sit in the summerhouse. I was going to suggest that Maria come here with me to relax for a while, but before I could say a word she decided to go after them and wanted me to go with her. She asked them about her mother and insisted upon the truth as they knew it. It was an uncomfortable conversation for them all, but I believe it is going to help enormously. I left them hugging one another and shedding tears.”

  “Ah, reconciliation,” he said. “It is what I hoped for. Though there was always the chance the opposite would happen and they would all part forever after a bitter quarrel.”

  “I do not believe that will happen now,” she said. “I believe Maria has discovered a family who will stick with her in the future. Poor thing. She loved her mother very dearly. But I think she is beginning to understand that the countess was not always perfect.”

  He gazed at her while Captain nudged at his hand in the hope of being petted. Justin obliged him.

  “I did not meet her,” Lady Estelle said, her eyes steady on his. “But I think she must have been an unpleasant woman. I cannot imagine any other mother refusing help from professional nurses who had been sent to her, no doubt at considerable expense, and insisting instead that she be tended exclusively by her very young daughter. Maria was barely nineteen when she died.”

  What could he say? He chose to say nothing.

  “I am sorry,” she said, smiling fleetingly. “It is none of my business— as usual. But I have interrupted your musings. I ought to leave you to them and continue my walk.”

  “I made it your business, Lady Estelle,” he said, smoothing his hand along Captain’s back, “when I asked you to come here as a companion for my sister. I will say this much. I was badly hurt when my father remarried. Perhaps children always are under such circumstances, but—”

  “No, not necessarily,” she said. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen,” he said.

  “I was seventeen when my father married my stepmother,” she said. “There were complications in their courtship and they broke off their betrothal and went their separate ways. Bertrand and I had to work very hard to bring them back together and get them to marry each other on a Christmas Eve. We did it because it was obvious to us that they were painfully in love with each other, and because our father would never have been happy without her. And because his happiness mattered to us. I will always love my mother, though I have no conscious memories of her. But I adore my stepmother. Children are not always resentful of the second marriage of their surviving parent.”

  “My father and mother were very close,” he said. “There was affection and laughter in the house when I was a child, and I was included in it. They made me feel that I was their most prized treasure. I thought my father would go insane after she died. I thought he would never be happy again. After three years he was just beginning to pull himself back from the brink. But when he went to London for the parliamentary session and came back with a … a girl not quite five years older than me and announced that he would be marrying her within a month, I thought I must be in the middle of a bizarre sort of nightmare. I was biased against her, of course. I will admit that. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not understand why he was doing it. Apart from the fact that she was extraordinarily lovely, that was. But it seemed so unlike my father to be bowled over by just that. It seemed to me that she lacked character and … and anything else that could possibly interest him. I was terribly hurt. We had been closer than ever since my mother’s death. He had promised to return from London just as soon as he possibly could. We were going to go to Cornwall, he to spend time with his sisters and brothers-in-law, I to frolic with the cousins. We had been planning it since Christmas. But … Well, I felt abandoned, forgotten, pushed aside for someone who was more important to him, though I could not for the life of me understand why. It hurts to lose faith in a parent you have always looked up to as perfect in every way.”

  “The story Lady Maple told a few days ago about the first meeting of your father and stepmother was new to you?” she asked.

  “Entirely,” he said. “But it explained … everything.” And he did mean everything. Even the way it had all ended between him and his father. For before all else, his father had been an honorable man. An honorable man married a woman whose reputation he had compromised, even if he had been tricked into doing so. And an honorable man defended his wife at the expense of all else. Even his only son.

  “Yes,” she said. “I suppose it did.” She moved as though she intended to rise.

  “Stay awhile,” he said.

  She settled back against her cushion.

  She was wearing some perfume. Something floral. Gardenia? It was not a harsh scent, though, as many women’s perfumes were. It was soft and subtle. It seemed part of her. He had not consciously noticed it in the summerhouse or when he stood with her in one of the twin sitting rooms in the state apartments, but he must have done so unconsciously.

  “When you were banished from here,” she said, “you did not take a fortune in jewels with you. Presumably you had nothing or next to nothing. You were gone for a number of years. Where did you go? What did you do?”

  He had never mingled his worlds. Wes and Hilda had known nothing of his life here. They had not even known until he got word of his father’s death that he was heir to an earldom. All they had guessed was that he was a gentleman by birth, down on his luck. No one in this world, not even his aunt and uncle, knew about his other life. They knew only that he had survived and that three or four times a year he had gone to pick up the letters they had written or forwarded to him and had sent them a brief note to acknowledge their receipt. He had been thinking earlier of a plan that would bring his worlds together, but it had not yet taken definite shape in his mind and perhaps never would. It might be preferable to leave well enough alone.

  Was he now to bring those two worlds together simply by answering the questions this woman had asked him? This woman who less than a week ago had refused his offer to make her his countess? This virtual stranger?

  “I went,” he said. “I had a choice of four directions and infinite subdirections within each. I went west. I stayed at inns and ate at taverns for a week or so while reality set in. There was no going back home. Ever. Not while my father lived. There was no home. There was no replacement for the little money I had. There was no income.”

  “You had no friends to go to?” she asked. “You would not— or could not— go to any of your relatives? There was no chance of genteel employment— perhaps in London?”

  There had been possibilities. He had had a few friends who might have helped. His uncle Rowan would have recommended him to some employment suited to his education and background. His aunts and uncles in Cornwall would almost certainly have taken him in and pointed him in the right direction if he had told them he wished to earn his way. He had chosen instead to go his own road— quite literally.

  “There was a matter of pride and some stubbornness,” he said. “And despite all the pain I was feeling, I had an image of myself as a young adventurer striding off into the world and into the future to make his fortune.”

  “And did you succeed?” she asked.

  “I made my future,” he said. “One really has no choice over that, short of ending it all. I never considered taking my life. I worked wherever I could, and pride— as well as necessity— led me to take anything I was offered. It was never anyth
ing even remotely attractive. The respect with which I had been treated as a matter of course for the first twenty-two years of my life meant nothing when I stepped out of my own … bubble. It was in fact a cause of ridicule at best, of vicious hostility at worst. I was considered good for nothing— and was told so. I swept out taverns and cleaned latrines. I fed pigs and mucked out their pens. I worked in a coal mine until there was a cave-in along one of the underground tunnels— I was in the other at the time. I worked on a dock, loading and unloading freight. I could go on and on. Some jobs lasted a few days, others a few weeks. I slept wherever I could, sometimes under a solid roof, sometimes in a barn or beneath a hedgerow. After two years I met the man who was to become my best friend.”

  “The one who broke your nose,” she said.

  “Yes. Wes,” he said. “Wesley Mort. He was and is a foreman at a stone quarry. After he had knocked me to the tavern floor and I was only semiconscious, he voiced his contempt for me and all men of my class and told me that if I wanted to be a real man I could come and work for him. Which I did two days later, much to his astonishment. I worked for him for four years, until I heard about my father’s death and came back here. He was not easy on me. Quite the contrary. He gave me all the most brutal tasks during the first year or so and kept me at them for longer hours than he kept anyone else— because I was slower and worse than useless, in his stated opinion. I earned nothing for the extra time I put in.”

  “But he became your best friend?” She had set an elbow on her knee and had her chin propped on her hand. She was looking slightly amused, Justin thought.

  “He kept his end of our bargain and stopped calling me Mr. La-di-da after the first week,” he said. “Ever after I was Juss. He worked as hard as I did, I must explain, and considerably harder until I toughened up. I lived with him and Hilda, his woman. I shared a loft with his brother, Ricky. I taught Wes to read and write, though he still gets frustrated at the slowness with which he does both. I used to tell Ricky stories, and Wes and Hilda would often listen, though Wes pretended not to. It was beneath his dignity to take delight from an imaginary world. We made a wagon between us, and both Wes and Hilda had the use of my horse to pull it.”